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AGNOSTICISM 


BY  THE  SAME  AUTHOR 


Agnosticism.    Crown  8vo.    $'iS.OO  net. 

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AGNOSTICISM 


BY 

ROBERT    FLINT 

D.D.,    LL.D.,    F.R.S.E. 

COBRESPONDINS  MEMBER  OP  THE  INSTITUTE  (JP  FRANCE 

HONOBAKT   MEMBER  OP  THE   ROYAL  SOCIETY   OP  PALERMO;  AND 

PROPBSSOB  IN  THE  UNIVERSITY  OP  EDINBURGH 


NEW  YORK 

CHARLES    SCRIBNER'S    SONS 

1903 


COPTEIGHT,   1902,  1903,   BT 

CHARLES  SCRIBNER'S  SONS 


All  rights  reserved 


Published,  January,  1903 


TROW  DIRECTORY 

PRINTINQ  AND  BOOKBINDINQ  COMPANY 

NEW  YORK 


CONTENTS 


Chapter  I. —THE  NATURE  OF  AGNOSTICISM. 


I.  Origin,  Original  Application,  and  Defects  of  the 
Term 


1-10 

Hutton  and  Huxley  on  origin  of  the  term       .         .  1-3 

Critical  remarks  on  the  term  and  its  application     ,  3-6 

Favourable  reception  of  the  word  :  its  causes        .  6-9 

Tribute  to  Huxley           .....  10 

II.  Agnosticism  an  Epistemological  Theory.    Equiva- 
lent TO  Philosophical  Scepticism         .        .  10-24 

Questions  as  to  limits  of  knowledge        .         .         .  11-14 

On  the  differentia  of  the  terra  agnosticism      .         .  15 

Likeness  to  the  term  socialism        ....  16 

Definition  must  be  relative     .....  20 

The  duty  thus  implied    ......  20-22 

Correct  use  of  the  term          .....  22-24 

III.  Agnosticism  and  Gnosticism 24-37 

How  related   ...                  ....  24-26 

Merits  and  defects  of  both 26-27 

Truthfulness 28-30 

Faith  and  doubt 30-34 

Function  of  doubt 34-35 

Our  knowledge  imperfect 35-36 

Lesson  for  us 36-37 

vii 


CONTENTS 


Chapter  IL— ERBONEOUS  VIEWS  OF  AGNOS- 
TICISM. 

PAGES 

I.  Not  Equivalent  to  Truth — Search  or  Honesty  in 

Investigation 38-46 

Owen  on  dogmatism  and  scepticism  .  .  .  38-42 
Huxley  on  agnosticism  and  creed  .         .        .     42-46 

II.  Not  Equivalent  to  Know-Nothingism.     Relation 

of  Agnosticism  to  the  Theory  of  Nescience  46-50 
Agnosticism  and  doctrine  of  nescience  .  .  ,  46-48 
Agnosticism  only  a  special  theory  of  nescience      .     48-50 

III.  Not   Necessarily  Atheism,  although  Atheism  is 

OFTEN  Agnosticism.     Dr.  Bithell's   Position  50-54 

Agnosticism  not  atheism  .....  50-52 
Atheist's  relation  to  agnosticism :  opinion  of  Dr. 

Bithell 52-54 

IV.  Not  to    be    Identified  with   Positivism.     Pro- 

fessor Fraser           ......  54-58 

Agnosticism  not  positivism     .....  54 

Professor  Fraser's  view.     Note      ....  55 

Positivism  and  theory  of  knowledge      .         .        .  66-58 

V.  Not  to  be  Identified  with  Denial  op  the  Cog- 

NOSCIBILITY,     accompanied     WITH     AFFIRMATION 

OF    THE    Reality,    of    the    Absolute.     Pro- 
fessor Calderwood 58-62 

Professor  Calderwood's  view  ....     59-62 

VI.  Roberty's  Views  on  the  Nature  of  Agnosticism 

Stated  and  Criticised 62-71 

General  statement  of  his  views      ....  62-68 

Originality  and  ingenuity  of  them  .         .        .  68-69 

Defects 69-71 

VII.  Criticism  of  Leslie  Stephen's  Views  of  Agnos- 
ticism           71_80 

His  application  of  the  name 71-72 

Its  unfairness 73-76 

On  misuse  of  certain  terms 76-80 

viii 


CONTENTS 


Chafteb  in.— histoby  of  agnosticism. 


I.  Iktroductory.     Oriental  Agnosticism 
Agnosticism  should  be  studied  historically 
Origin  and  early  stages  of  agnosticism 
Oriental  agnosticism — Hebrew,  Chinese,  Hindu 

U.  Greco-Roman  Agnosticism.  Pre-Socratic  or 
Preliminary  Period      .         .         .         . 

Influence  of  Eleatic,  Heraclitean,  and  Material 
istic  philosophy  on  Greek  scepticism 

The  sophists  and  agnosticism 

III.  Post-Socratic  or  Developed  Period 

Pyrrho,  Arcesilaos,  and  Carneades  as  sceptics 
JEnesidemus  and  the  ten  tropes  . 
^nesidemus  and  causality 
Sextus  Empiricus  and  the  Pyrrhonic  Institutes 
Greek   scepticism  not  specially  antagonistic  to 
religion  or  morality         .... 

rV.  Middle  Ages 

How  far  agnosticism  was  present  in  the  medie 
Tal  world 


81-88 
81-82 
82-84 
84-88 

88-94 

88-92 
92-94 

95-108 

95-101 

102-103 

104-105 

105-106 

106-108 
108-111 

108-110 


,  V.  First  Period  of  Modern  Agnosticism.     Causes 

AND  Characteristics      .....  111-116 

Causes  of  agnosticism  in  the  period     .         .         .  111-113 

Characteristics  of  the  agnosticism  of  the  period  113-116 

VL  Representative  Agnostics   op  the  Transition 

Period 116-135 

Agrippa  of  Nettesheim 116-118 

Montaigne 119-124 

Charron ,  124-125 

Sanchez      ,  125-128 

La  Mothe  Le  Vayer 128-129 

Glanville,  Hirnhaim,  and  Huet  ....  129-132 

Pascal         132-133 

Bayle 133-135 

ix 


CONTENTS 


Chapter   IV.— AGNOSTICISM  OF  HUME    AND    KANT. 


I.  Hume  :    Prefatory  as  to  his  Agnosticism 

Influence  of  Hume.     How  Huxley,  Kiehl,  and 

Compayre  have  overlooked  his  scepticism 
Sources  of  Hume's  philosophy  and  scepticism    . 
Kelation  of  his  agnosticism  to  his  psychology. 

Hume  and  Locke 


PAOK8 

136-143 


13()-138 
138-140 


140-143 


II.  Hume's  Agnosticism  in  General 

His  sensism  and  views  on  substances 
Hume  on  consciousness  of  self  and  causality 

III.  Hume's  Agnosticism  in  Religion 

His  personal  attitude  towards  religion 
Thoroughness  of  his  anti-theological  scepticism 
His  Natural  History  of  Religion 

His  Essays  on  Miracles 

Final  issue  of  his  scepticism      .... 

IV.  Kant's  Answer  to  Hume      ..... 

Relation  of  Kant  to  Hume  .... 

Kant's  Transcendental  Esthetic  stated 
Criticism  of  it :  its  defects  .... 

Kant's  Transcendental  Logic  :  (^4)  Analytic  , 

General  statement  of 

Hume  and  Kant  compared.   Superiority  of  latter 
Criticism  of  Kant's  criticism  of  knowledge 

Kant's  Transcendental  Logic  :  {B)  Dialectic 
His  doctrine  of  pure  reason  stated  and  criticised 
His  "  Rational  Psychology  "  partly  true,  partly 
erroneous        ....... 

His  "  Rational  Cosmology  "  in  the  main  a  failure 
His  "  Rational  Theology  "  ingenious  and  self-con- 
sistent but  inconclusive  ..... 

His  criticism  of  the  theistic  arguments  examined 
Its  general  defects      ...... 

Worth  of  the  cry,  "  Back  to  Kant" 


143- 

-155 

143- 

150 

150- 

155 

155- 

-168 

155- 

-158 

159- 

-161 

161- 

-162 

162- 

-166 

166- 

-168 

168-238 

168- 

-170 

170- 

-175 

175- 

-184 

184- 

-198 

184- 

-188 

188- 

-190 

190- 

-198 

198- 

-237 

198- 

-206 

206 

210 

210- 

-216 

216- 

-230 

230- 

-232 

232 

-235 

235 

-238 

CONTENTS 


Chait^  v.— complete    OR    ABSOLUTE 
CISM. 


AGNOSTI- 


I.  Agnosticism  not  Exactly  Divisible.      Its  Gen- 
eral Divisions 239-243 

No  strictly  absolute  or  total  agnosticism     .         .  239-240 

No  merely  partial  or  modified  agnosticism  .  240-241 

Modification  and  limitation  imply  each  other       .  241-243 

II.  Why     Complete    Agnosticism  Requires   to    be 
Discussed.     Criticism    of    the     Views   of 

Paulsen  .    • 244-253 

Complete  agnosticism  should  be  first  considered  244 

Paulsen's   reasons   for  disbelief   in   a  sceptical 

theory  of  knowledge  .....  245-247 
They  are  contradicted  by  the  history  of  philosophy  247-249 
Hume  misunderstood  .....     250-251 

Absolute  agnosticism  not  extinct         ,         .         .     251-252 
Is   a  distinct   form   of  solving  the  problem  of 

knowledge       252-253 

III.  Species   of  Complete   Agnosticism.     Inconsist- 

ency of  Systematic  and  Universal  Doubt    254-265 
The  agnosticism  of  universal  doubt  self- contra- 
dictory         254-261 

Relationship  of  doubt  to  belief  and  disbelief. 
Implies  the  existence  of  a  self-contradictory 
world 261-265 

IV.  Inconsistency  of  Systematic  and  Universal  Dis- 

belief          265-268 

Warrants  the  inference  only  of  negations  .     266-268 

V.  Absolute  Agnosticism  and  First  Principles     .  269-279 

Antagonistic        .......  269-270 

Its  relation  to  philosophy  and  to  first  principles 

and  necessary  laws  of  thought         .         .         .  270-275 
Its  claim  to  be  incapable  of  refutation        .         .  276-278 
Assent  to  first  principles  not  mere  belief  but  ac- 
ceptance of  self-evidence        ....  278-279 

VI.  Absolute  Agnosticism  and  Practical  Life        .  279-286 
The  former  inconsistent  with  the  requirements 

of  the  latter 279-284 

Is  ethically  unsatisfactory  ....  284-286 

xi 


CONTENTS 

Chapter  VI.— ON  MITIGATED  AND  PARTIAL  AGNOS 
TICISM  AND   THEIE   FORMS. 

PAGES 

Absolute  agnosticism  a  false  and  unattainable  ideal   287-288 

I.  Mitigated  Agnosticism.  Its  Underlying  As- 
sumptions            288-300 

Has  always  been  effected  tlirougb  an  illegitimate 

combination  of  dogmatism  witb  scepticism      .     288-290 

Tbat  sbown  in  Pyrrhonism.     Its  inconsistency  .     290-295 

Its  separation  and  contrast  of  reality  and  appear- 
ance, knowledge  and  opinion  .         .         .     295-298 

Pyrrbo  on  reasoning.  His  scepticism  and  dog- 
matism         298-300 

II.  Hume    on   Mitigated  and  Absolute  Scepticism     300-309 
Professedly  an  Academic  not  a  Pyrrbonian  scep- 
tic.    His  view  of  tbeir  relationship          .         .     300-304 
Eeid's  position  towards  scepticism  more  reason- 
able       304-306 

Hume  clearly  recognised  an  absolute  scepticism 
to  be  ruinous,  but  erroneously  imagined  it 
migbt  lead  to  a  useful  mitigated  scepticism    .     306-309 

III.  Partial  or  Limited  Scepticism  :   its  Forms  and 

THEIR  Inter-Relations          ....  309-334 

Classification  of  agnosticisms     ....  309-312 

Religious  and  anti- religious  agnosticism.     .         .  312-314 
How  the  agnosticism  which  originates  in  faulty 

theorising  bears  on  religion    ....  314-316 

Mathematics  and  agnosticism      ....  316-318 

Scepticism  as  to  physical  science        .        .         .  318-319 

Historical  scepticism 319-322 

Ethical  agnosticism 322-324 

Metaphysical  agnosticism 324-328 

How  it  bears  on  theology   .....  328 
How  its  forms  may  be  grouped  with  reference 

to  the  powers  or  principles  of  mind         .         .  328-329 

Scepticism  as  to  the  testimony  of  the  senses       .  329-330 

Scepticism  as  to  memory 330-333 

Scepticism  as  to  reason 333-334 

xii 


CONTENTS 


Chapter  VH.  —  PARTIAL  OR  LIMITED  AGNOSTI- 
CISM  AS  TO  ULTIMATE  OBJECTS  OF  KNOWL- 
EDGE. 

PAGES 

Prefatory  Remarks 335-336 

I.  On  Assigning  Limits  to  Knowledge  .         .         .  336-355 

Not  to  be  ascertained  a  priori  or  by  mere  intro- 
spection              336-338 

The  proper  place  and  function  of  epistemology  338-340 
Scepticism  as  to  philosophy  ....  340-341 
Scepticism  as  to  physical  science  .  .  .  341-343 
Philosophy  should  provide  on  epistemology  .  343-346 
Claims  of  theology  to  fair  treatment  .  .  .  346-348 
Truths  as  to  the  limitation  of  knowledge  .  .  348-350 
Dr.  Bithell  on  the  subject  ....  350-353 
On  a  favourite  quotation  from  Tennyson's  An- 
cient Sage 353-355 

II.  The  Ultimate  Objects  of  Knowledge     .         .  355-369 

"  Self,"  "  World,"  and  "  God  "  not  unambiguous 

terms, — especially  "  Self  "  and  "  World  "      .  355-358 

Perhaps  "  Space  "  and  "Time  "  should  be  added 

as  ultimates  of  knowledge       ....  359-369 

ill.  Agnosticism  and  the  Self  .....  369-388 
Agnosticism  impossible  within  the  sphere  of  self- 
consciousness  strictly  so-called,  but  that  sphere 

is  narrow 369-371 

Yet  without  self-consciousness  we  could  have  no 
knowledge   even   of   our   own  minds,  nor  of 

other  selves,  nor  of  comparative  psychology  .  371-374 

Hume's  sceptical  treatment  of  consciousness      .  374-375 

Also  H.  Spencer's 375-378 

Broussais'  polemic  against  consciousness   .         .  379-381 
Exaggeration  of  the  dependence  of  consciousness 

on  physiological  conditions      ....  381-382 

Alleged  loss  of  consciousness  of  self-identity     .  383-384 
Knowledge  even  of  self  is  limited  and  defective 
and  involved  in  mysteries  like  those  connected 

with  a  knowledge  of  God  and  of  nature  .         .  384-388 
xiii 


CONTENTS 

PAGES 

IV.  Agnosticism  as  to  the  World   ....  888-417 

Greatness  and  littleness  of  nature       .         .         .  388-390 

Are  other  Worlds  than  the  earth  inhabited          .  391-393 

Nature-worship  and  Hylozoism  ....  393-394 

No  absolute  knowledge  of  matter       .         .         .  394-396 

Agnosticism  as  to  an  external  world  .        .         .  396-402 

Inconsistency  of  materialism      ....  402-404 

Knowledge  of  matter  not  proA-ed  to  be  the  most 

certain     ........  404-407 

Parallelism   between  knowledge  of  God  and  of 

the  world.  Thompson's  Christian  Theism  .  407-408 
Huxley  and  Spencer  not  materialists  ,  .  408-410 
Objections  against  knowledge  of  God  and  knowl- 
edge of  matter  substantially  identical  .  .  410-411 
Imperfections  of  physical  science  .  .  .  411-414 
Reasons  for  accepting  it 414-417 


Chaptek  VIII.— agnosticism  AS  TO  GOD. 

I.  Introductory  Remarks   on   Agnosticism  as  to 

God 418-427 

All  agnosticism  as  to  religion  refers  to  the  object 

of  religion       .......  418-422 

May  be  religious,  anti-religious,  or  non-religious  422-423 

How  those  forms  are  related       ....  423-427 

11.  Prevalence  of  Anti-Religious  Agnosticism       .  427-435 
Contrast  of  past  and  present  in  the  history  of 

agnosticism      .         .  ....  427-429 

The  change  largely  unjustified    ....  429-433 

Mr.  A.  Balfour's  demands  on  so-called  scientific 

agnostics  essentially  just        ....  433-435 

III.  Some  Causes  of  Prevalence  of  Anti-Religious 

Agnosticism    .......     435-451 

Critical  temper  and  scientific  spirit  of  the  age  to 

some  extent  a  cause        .....     435-438 

Also  want  of  religious  susceptibility  and  disci- 
pline             438-443 

xiv 


CONTENTS 


FAGEB 

The   prevalence  of  anti-religious  feelings  and 

passions  ........     443-445 

That  evil  has  often  favoured  the  spread  of  relig- 
ion of  a  kind  must  be  granted  .         .        .     445-446 

A  main  cause  of  anti-religious  agnosticism  is 
non-recognition  of  the  practical  and  ethical 
character  of  religion        .... 


IV.  "The  Will"  and  "the  Wish"  to  Believe 

The  views  of  William  James  and  Wilfrid  Ward 
not  the  full  truth 


447-451 
451-45G 

451-455 


Chaftek    IX.  —  AGNOSTICISM     AS     TO    EELIGIOUS 
BELIEF. 


Power  of  belief 467 

L  Theories  as  to  Belief 458-477 

Importance  to  the  theologian  of  a  theory  of  be- 
lief .         .         .' 458-460 

What  belief  is  and  is  not 460-463 

Hume's  theory  of  belief 463-465 

James  and  J.  S.  Mill  on  belief  ....  466-469 

Dr.  Bain's  theory  of  belief  stated  and  criticised  469-477 

II.  The  Sphere  of  Belief 478-486 

III.  Christian  Faith  in  Relation  to  Belief    .        .     486-491 

IV.  Wnr  Belief  as  to  Religion  is  so  often  False    492-499 

It  is  to  a  vast  extent  false 492-494 

Some  of  the  chief  causes  why  it  is  so  indicated  .     494-499 

V.  The    Sceptical     Inference    from   Prevalence 
OP  False  Religious  Belief  Erroneous 
The  sceptical  inference  indicated 
As   relevant   against  doubt   and   scepticism   as 
against  belief  and  dogmatism.     Also  an  exces- 
sive generalisation  ..... 
The  distinction  betweeen  reasons  and  causes  of 
belief  is  an  indefinite  and  confused  one.     Re- 
marks on  the  point         ..... 
XV 


499-510 
499-500 


500-501 


502-503 


CONTENTS 

PAflES 

Reasons  are  also  causes  of  belief,  good  reasons 
its  only  true  causes  .....     604-605 

Reasons  which  are  the  causes  of  the  progressive 
truthfulness  of  religion,  and  causes  which  are 
conditions  of  its  reasonableness      .        .         .     605-608 

The  Supreme  reason 508-510 

VI.  Tkue  Inferences  from  Prevalence  of  False 

Religious  Belief  .....     610-516 

Need  for  caution  in  the  formation  of  religious 
beliefs  and  for  guarding  against  unreasonable 
doubt  or  excessive  unbelief     ....     510-512 

Also  need  of  concerning  oneself  chiefly  with 
what  is  essential  and  vital  in  religion      .         .     512-513 

What  is  meant  by  the   reason  to  which  belief 

ought  to  be  conformed    .....     514-515 

VIL  Bases     op    Agnostic     Religious     Belief    in 

Christianity  ...         ...     616-526 

History  of  opinion  as  to  relationship  between  rea- 
son and  faith 516-518 

Religious  belief  and  Christian  faith   based  on 

various  grounds 618-521 

On  attempts  to  rest  belief  on  itself    .        .        .     522-523 

Storrs  Turner's  view 523-526 

VIII.  Religious   Belief  and  Transmitted  Common 

Doctrine  and  General  Consent          .         .  526-536 
Significance  of  the  traditional  factor  in  belief    .  626-528 
Leslie  Stephen,  J.  H.  Newman,  and   H.  Spen- 
cer's views  on  subject 528-530 

Protestant  and  Catholic  estimates  of  tradition    .  530-533 

Theories  of  De  Bonald  and  De  Lamennais  .  683-536 

IX.  Relation  of  Character  to  History  of  Belief  636-539 

X.  Belief  in  Relation  to  Authority.    Forms  of 

Religious  Authority 639-551 

Nature,  value,  and  influence  of  authority  .         .  639-540 

Personal  authority 641-543 

Church  authority 643-546 

Authority  of  Bible  and  external  evidences  .  646-551 

xyi 


CONTENTS 


Chapteb    X.— agnosticism     AS 
OF  GOD. 


TO    KNOWLEDGE 


FAOE 

I.  A  Glance  AT  THE  History  OP  Religious  Knowledge  662-577 
Religion  as  subjective  fact  and  historical  phe- 
nomenon         .......  652-555 

Diversity   of   opinions   as  to  starting-point  and 

earliest  stages          .....*.  655-556 

Polytheistic  religions           .....  656-558 

Monistic  religions  (Egyptian,  Chinese,and  Hindu)  558-564 

Dualistic  religion  (the  Mazdean)         .         .         .  564-566 
Monotheistic   religions   (Jewish,  Christian,  and 

Mohammedan) 666-673 

Lessons  from  the  history 673-577 

II.  In   what  Senses  Knowledge  of  God  is  not  At- 
tainable        .......  578-686 

Comprehensive  knowledge  not  attainable            .  578-580 

Nor  non-relative  knowledge        ....  680-583 

Nor  apart  from  divine  self-manifestations           .  583-585 

m.  Agnostic  Positions  Relative  to  Knowledge  of 

God 685-603 

That  such  knowledge   is   only  to  be  attained 

through  special  revelation  (Bibliolatry)   .         .  685-589 

Not  warranted  by  the  Bible         ....  690 

That  religious  knowledge  is  unlike  all  other  real 

knowledge  (Symbolism,  Ritschlianism,  &c.)    .  690-596 

Sabatier's  "  critical  theory  of  religious  knowl- 
edge "      696-598 

His   distinction   between  natural   and   religious 

knowledge  not  valid 698-599 

Nor  his  distinction  between  scientific  and  relig- 
ious knowledge        599-603 

IV.  The    Agnosticism    of    Hamilton,  Mansel,  and 

Spencer          604-639 

I.  The  Agnosticism  of  Hamilton         .         .         .  604-621 

Relation  of  Hamilton  to  Kant        .         .         .  604-607 

Criticism  of  his  fundamental  principles        .  607-621 
xvii 


CONTENTS 


Relativity  of  knowledge — how  far  true,  how 

far  erroneous     ....  .  607-610 

To  think  is  to  condition — how  far  true,  how 

far  erroneous    ......  610-613 

Incognoscibility  of  the  absolute  and  infinite 

not  justified 614-621 

II.  Agnosticism  of  Mansel  ....  621-629 

Relation  to  Hamilton 621-622 

His  chief  errors     .         .         .        .         .        .  622-629 

III.  Agnosticism  of  Spencer         ....  629-639 

Relation  to  Mansel 629-630 

Defects  of  his  first  principles  and  of  his  infer- 
ences from  them 630-639 

Pkksent  Work  Part  of  a  System  of  Natural 

Theology 640-664 

Influence  of  Kantian  agnosticism  on  theology  .  641-643 

Indirect  influence  of  .         .         .         .         .         .  643-644 

Merits  and  defects  of  the  philosophy  of  the  ab- 
solute         644-651 

The  proofs  and  bases  of  theistic  belief        .         .  651-656 

Advance  of  trinitarian  and  unitarian  theism        ,  656-660 
Place  of  the  idea  of  God  in  human  thought  and 

experience 660-663 

Agnosticism  as  to  God  likely  to  be  long  prevalent  663-664 


XVlll 


AGNOSTICISM 

CHAPTER  I 
THE  NATURE   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

I.    ORIGIN,    OBIGINAL    APPLICATION,    AND    DEFECTS 
OF    THE    TEEM 

Our  study  of  agnosticism  may  appropriately  begin 
with  an  inquiry  as  to  the  nature  or  kind  of  thought 
so  designated. 

What,  then,  ought  we  to  mean  by  agnosticism  ? 
The  name  itself  should  so  far  help  us  to  an  answer ; 
and  even  if  it  be  found  not  directly  of  itself  to  aid 
us  much,  we  may  be  indirectly  profited  by  an  ex- 
amination of  it. 

It  is  a  comparatively  new  term,  being  little  more 
than  thirty  years  old.  It  was  preceded  by  the  word 
"  agnostic,"  as  to  the  date  of  the  invention  of  which 
we  have  very  precise  information. 

According  to  Mr.  R.  H.  Ilutton,  this  latter  word 
was  "suggested  by  Professor  Huxley,  at  a  party 
held  previous  to  the  formation  of  the  now  defunct 
Metaphysical  Society,  at  Mr.  James  Knowles's  house 
on  Clapham  Common,  one  evening  in  1869,  in  my 

1 


THE  NATURE   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

hearing.     He  took  it  from  St.  Paul's  mention  of  the 
altar  to  '  the  imknown  God.'  "  ^ 

Professor  Huxley's  own  account  of  the  matter  is 
as  follows :  "  When  I  reached  intellectual  maturity 
and  began  to  ask  myself  whether  I  was  an  atheist, 
a  theist,  or  a  pantheist ;  a  materialist  or  an  idealist ; 
a  Christian  or  a  freethinker,  I  found  that  the  more 
I  learned  and  reflected  the  less  ready  was  the 
answer,  until  at  last  I  came  to  the  conclusion  that 
I  had  neither  art  nor  part  with  any  of  these  de- 
nominations except  the  last.  The  one  thing  in 
which  most  of  these  good  people  were  agreed  was 
the  one  thing  in  which  I  differed  from  them.  They 
were  quite  sure  that  they  had  attained  a  certain 
'  gnosis  ' — had,  more  or  less  successfully,  solved  the 
problem  of  existence;  while  I  was  quite  sure  that  I 
had  not,  and  had  a  pretty  strong  conviction  that  the 
problem  was  insoluble.  And  with  Hume  and  Kant 
on  my  side,  I  could  not  think  myself  presumptuous 
in  holding  fast  by  that  opinion.  .  .  .  This  was  my 
situation  when  I  had  the  good  fortune  to  find  a  place 
among  the  members  of  that  remarkable  confraternity 
of  antagonists,  long  since  deceased,  but  of  green  and 
pious  memory,  the  Metaphysical  Society.  Every 
variety  of  philosophical  and  theological  opinion  was 
represented  there,  and  expressed  itself  with  entire 
openness;  most  of  my  colleagues  were  -ists  of  one 
sort  or  another ;  and  however  kind  and  friendly  they 
might  be,  I,  the  man  without  a  rag  of  label  to  cover 
himself  with,  could  not  fail  to  have  some  of  the 
'  Murray's  New  English  Dictionary,,  s.v. 

•z 


HISTOEY   OF   THE  TEEM 

uneasy  feelings  which  must  have  beset  the  historical 
fox  when,  after  leaving  the  trap  in  which  his  tail 
remained,  he  presented  himself  to  his  normally  elon- 
gated companions.  So  I  took  thought,  and  invented 
what  I  conceived  to  be  the  appropriate  title  of 
'  agnostic'  It  came  into  my  head  as  suggestively 
antithetic  to  the  '  gnostic '  of  Church  history,  who 
professed  to  know  so  much  about  the  very  things  of 
which  I  was  ignorant ;  and  I  took  the  earliest  oppor- 
tunity of  parading  it  at  our  Society,  to  show  that  I, 
too,  had  a  tail,  like  the  other  foxes.  To  my  great  sat- 
isfaction, the  term  took ;  and  when  the  Spectator  had 
stood  godfather  to  it,  any  suspicion  in  the  minds  of 
respectable  people,  that  its  parentage  might  have 
awakened,  was,  of  course,  completely  lulled.  That  is 
the  history  of  the  terms  '  agnostic '  and  '  agnosti- 
cism.' "  ^ 

The  foregoing  statements  of  Mr.  Hutton  and  Pro- 
fessor Huxley  well  deserve  to  be  borne  in  mind,  but 
they  may  also  perhaps  be  usefully  supplemented  by 
the  following  remarks. 

1.  When  Professor  Huxley  took  the  term  "  agnos- 
tic "  from  St.  Paul's  mention  of  the  altar  to  "  the  un- 
known God,"  he  did  not  adhere  very  closely  to  the 
original.  That  was  arfvdxTT^  0ea>,  not  dyvaxTTLKtp  Beat. 
There  is  a  Greek  adjective  ^(hctiko^  but  not  an 
arfixiXTTiKo^ — only  an  ar/va><;  and  arfvaxxTo^.  It  was 
contrary  to  Greek  usage  to  terminate  with  Iko^  a 
word  which  commenced  with  alpha  privativum. 
Hence  the  words  "  agnostic  "  and  "  agnosticism  "  are, 

'  Huxley's  Collected  Essays,  vol.  v.  pp.  239,  240. 

3 


THE  NATUKE  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

linguistically  regarded,  not  unobjectionable.  Their 
abnormal  character  did  not  prevent  their  being  read- 
ily adopted  in  Britain ;  but  it  may  have  been  one  of 
the  reasons  which  caused  them  to  spread  but  slowly 
in  France  and  Germany/  They  failed,  so  far  as  I 
am  aware,  to  receive  naturalisation  into  any  conti- 
nental language  until  about  twenty  years  after  their 
invention  in  England. 

2.  The  words  referred  to  are  of  but  limited  intrin- 
sic value.  They  are  not  indispensable  for  any  pur- 
pose. "  Sceptic  "  and  "  scepticism,"  employed  in 
their  universally  recognised  and  only  philosophical 
signification,  would  have  served  Professor  Huxley 
just  as  well,  even  for  the  "  label  "  or  "  tail  "  of  which 
he  naturally  felt  the  need  among  his  friendly  adver- 
saries of  the  Metaphysical  Society,  as  "  agnostic " 
and  "  agnosticism."  Scepticism  is  a  very  old  -ism^ 
and  quite  as  respectable  as  most  of  the  other  -isms 
which,  we  are  told,  were  represented  in  the  Metaphys- 
ical Society.  It  has  had  not  only  a  lengthened,  but, 
on  the  whole,  an  influential,  useful,  and  brilliant  his- 
tory. It  has  had  among  its  adherents  many  great  in- 
tellects and  many  estimable  characters.  The  term 
"  scepticism "  conveys  in  itself  no  unfavourable 
moral  or  religious  implication ;  and  although  it  must 
be  admitted  that  it  has  acquired  an  offensive  connota- 
tion which  is  certainly  a  disadvantage,  the  term  "  ag- 
nosticism "  has,  during  its  brief  span  of  existence, 
unfortunately  acquired  just  the  same  connotation.  In 
all  probability  any  other  term  devised  to  express  the 
'  Appendix,  Note  1. 
4 


HUXLEY'S   EXPLANATION 

same  import  would  have  fared  no  better.  "  Scepti- 
cism "  and  "  agnosticism  "  are  not  exactly  equivalent 
terms, — do  not  mean  precisely  the  same  thing;  but 
they  denote  or  indicate  the  same  thing,  and  do  so  as  a 
whole,  although  each  points  specially  as  it  were  to  a 
different  side  of  that  thing.  "  Scepticism  "  refers 
more  clearly  and  distinctly  to  the  spirit  or  method 
and  "  agnosticism  "  to  the  outcome  or  result  of  the 
tendency  or  phase  of  thought  which  is  their  common 
object,  but  either  term  may  do  duty  for  the  other 
fairly  well  so  long  as  they  are  philosophically  em- 
ployed ;  and,  in  fact,  the  two  words  are  about  as 
nearly  synonymous  as  any  two  words  can  be  ex- 
pected to  be  which  refer  to  any  comprehensive  or 
complex  phenomenon. 

3.  "  The  title  of  '  agnostic,'  "  writes  Professor 
Huxley,  "  came  into  my  head  as  suggestively  anti- 
thetic to  the  '  gnostic  '  of  Church  history,  who  pro- 
fessed to  know  so  much  about  the  very  things  of 
which  I  was  ignorant."  Just  so.  But  what  does 
that  amount  to  ?  Is  it  not  that  "  agnostic  "  is  a  name 
derived  from  a  nickname,  a  title  of  honour  assumed 
in  antithesis  to  a  designation  of  contempt  ?  And  is 
not  the  legitimacy  of  the  origin  of  a  name  so  derived 
and  the  right  to  use  a  title  so  assumed  far  from  ap- 
parent ?  The  terms  "  atheist,"  "  theist,"  "  pan- 
theist," "  materialist,"  and  "  idealist,"  are  terms 
much  more  serviceable,  and  much  less  objectionable, 
than  "  freethinker  "  is,  or  than  "  agnostic  "  must  be 
if  understood  as  antithetic  to  the  "  gnostic "  of 
Church  history.     So  understood  "  agnostic  "  implies 

5 


THE   NATURE   OF   AGNOSTICISM 

that  all  except  agnostics  are  pretenders  to  a  knowl- 
edge which  they  do  not  possess,  while  it  does  not  give 
the  least  indication  as  to  what  knowledge  they  profess 
to  possess,  jnst  as  "  freethinker  "  implies  that  those 
who  do  not  think  as  he  does  who  so  calls  himself  is  a 
servile  thinker,  while  it  gives  no  indication  of  where- 
in the  freedom  assumed  differs  from  the  servility  al- 
leged. So  understood  it  could  not  fairly  differen- 
tiate Professor  Huxley  from  any  of  his  colleagues  in 
the  Metaphysical  Society.  None  of  them  would  have 
admitted  that  they  were  gnostics  or  declined  to  main- 
tain that  they  were  anti-gnostics.  Nobody  can  be 
expected  to  acknowledge  that  he  is  a  pretender  to 
a  knowledge  which  he  does  not  possess,  as  every  one 
would  do  who  called  himself,  or  allowed  himself  to  be 
called,  a  gnostic.  The  use  of  gnos  in  gnosticism  and 
agnosticism  to  mean  not  gnosis  or  Jcnowledge  but  the 
illusion  of  it  or  false  claim  to  it  is  essentially  unfair. 
No  one  will  consent  to  bear  the  name  of  gnostic  or 
admit  that  he  holds  a  gnostic  creed  in  that  sense. 
The  the-  in  theism,  atheism,  and  pantheism  alike 
really  signifying  theos  or  God,  and  the  materia  in 
materialism  and  the  idea  in  idealism  being  both 
used  in  their  ordinary  and  accepted  sense,  the 
adherents  of  any  of  these  -isms  will  allow  that  they 
belong  to  that  -ism  and  profess  their  readiness  to 
maintain  what  is  distinctive  in  its  creed. 

4.  Why  did  Huxley  not  give  to  the  terms  which 
he  invented  their  proper  signification?  Obviously 
because  they  w:ould  not  then  have  meant  what  he 
wished  them  to  mean.     By   professing  himself  an 

6 


DEFECTS   OF  THE  TERM 

agnostic  he  did  not  desire  or  intend  to  attribute  to 
himself  ignorance  of  any  kind  of  knowledge  or  in- 
ability to  acquire  any  kind  of  knowledge.  In  advo- 
cating the  claims  of  what  he  termed  agnosticism  he 
was  not  seeking  to  recommend  a  theory  of  universal 
nescience  or  of  any  kind  of  nescience  which  could  be 
dispelled.  The  terms  agnostic  and  agnosticism  natu- 
rally mean  in  themselves  what  he  did  not  mean  by 
them,  and  even  the  very  opposite  of  what  he  meant 
by  them.  "  Know-nothingism  "  is  a  fair  enough  ren- 
dering of  the  meaning  of  the  word  agnosticism,  al- 
though it  utterly  misrepresents  Huxley's  idea  of  what 
the  word  should  denote. 

5.  Further,  Huxley's  account  of  the  invention  of 
the  terms  under  consideration  appears  to  recognise  a 
right  on  the  part  of  the  agnostic  to  reject  only  meta- 
physics and  theology.  The  possibility  or  legitimacy 
of  agnostically  treating  the  deliverances  of  sense  and 
the  processes  and  conclusions  of  science  is  not  con- 
templated. But  that  is  a  defect.  The  genus  must  in- 
clude all  the  species.  The  term  agnosticism,  like  the 
term  scepticism,  cannot  with  propriety  be  limited  to 
any  particular  class  or  classes  of  the  theories  which 
question  or  reject  what  claims  to  be  knowledge.  If 
a  man  be  merely  a  metaphysical  or  theological  or  a 
metaphysical  and  theological  agnostic,  he  is,  of 
course,  fully  entitled  to  describe  himself  as  what  he 
is ;  but  not  to  deny  to  others  the  right  to  be  and  to  des- 
ignate themselves  scientific  agnostics,  or  to  assume 
that  scientific  agnosticism,  in  the  sense  of  scepticism 
as  to  the  certainty  of  science,  is  less  legitimate  and 

7 


THE  NATUEE   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

rational  than  the  agnosticism  which  he  himself  pro- 
fesses. 

6.  No  one  probably  will  maintain  that  the  words 
agnostic  and  agnosticism  have  owed  their  favourable 
reception  in  this  country  entirely  to  their  intrinsic 
merits.  Obviously  they  have  also  owed  it  in  some 
degree  to  their  being  rather  imposing  and  seductive 
words  which  carry  with  them  an  air  of  learning  and 
profundity.  The  man  who  calls  himself  an  agnostic 
implicitly  claims  to  be  no  common  man,  but  a  phi- 
losopher, and  even  a  philosopher  so  deep  and  subtle  as 
to  entitle  him  to  despise  the  great  mass  of  ordinary 
philosophy  and  of  ordinary  conviction.  But  not  a 
few  of  those  who  call  themselves  agnostics  have  plain- 
ly no  other  claim  than  that  they  do  so  call  themselves 
to  be  deemed  philosophers,  or  to  have  thought  at  all 
on  so  abstruse  a  subject  as  the  conditions  and  capa- 
bilities of  cognition.  Of  course,  this  consideration  is 
put  forward  merely  to  explain  in  part  the  popularity 
of  the  terms  agnostic  and  agnosticism.  It  is  in  no 
way  implied  to  have  had  any  influence  on  the  leaders 
of  agnosticism — on  the  writers  of  books  or  essays  in 
defence  of  agnosticism — on  any  of  those  on  whom  I 
may  have  critically  to  comment  as  representatives  of 
agnosticism.  It  must  not  be  forgotten,  however,  that 
agnosticism,  like  other  causes  and  systems,  has  ad- 
herents of  very  different  quality. 

Again,  a  considerable  number  of  persons  were  glad 
to  assume  the  name  of  agnostics  in  the  hope  that  they 
would,  in  consequence,  not  be  named  atheists,  or  at 
least  from  the  wish  to  be  able  to  apply  to  themselves 

8 


TRIBUTE   TO   HUXLEY 

another  designation  than  one  which  they  felt  to  be 
unjust  and  opprobrious.  Their  hope,  I  imagine,  has 
not  been  realised.  The  result  of  an  atheist  calling 
himself  an  agnostic  almost  inevitably  is  that  other 
people  call  him  an  agnostic  atheist,  and  so  he  has  two 
hard  names  thrown  at  him  instead  of  one.  As  to  the 
wish,  most  Certainly  a  man  who  is  merely  an  agnostic 
is  entitled  to  protest  against  the  injustice  of  being 
spoken  of  as  an  atheist.  On  the  other  hand,  if  a 
man  be  really  an  atheist  in  the  ordinary  meaning 
of  the  term  he  has  no  right  to  claim  to  be  regarded 
merely  an  agnostic,  and  by  doing  so  he  necessarily 
spreads  and  confirms  the  very  error  against  which 
he  protests — the  confusion  of  agnosticism  with  athe- 
ism. Aversion  to  the  word  atheism  has  undoubtedly 
favoured  the  diffusion  of  the  word  agnosticism,  but 
it  has  unfortunately  also  contributed  largely  to  its 
misapplication. 

The  criticism  in  which  I  have  thus  far  indulged 
may  seem  to  some  of  my  readers  rather  hypercritical ; 
but  not,  I  am  persuaded,  to  any  one  who  adequately 
recognises  the  importance  of  entering  on  the  study  of 
our  subject  with  as  clear  and  correct  an  idea  of  what 
it  really  is  as  he  is  able  to  form.  ISTo  one  anxious  to 
judge  fairly  and  accurately  of  the  character  and 
claims  of  agnosticism  will  regret  the  time  which  he 
spends  in  careful  reflection  on  the  terms  employed 
to  denote  it,  or  deem  any  criticism  of  these  terms  liy- 
percriticism  simply  because  of  its  strictness  or  sever- 
ity. The  man  who  has  only  a  vague  or  false  conception 
of  the  meaning  and  implications  of  the  word  agnosti- 

9 


THE  NATURE  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

cism  must  have  also  hazy  and  confused  notions  and 
erroneous  and  unreasonable  views  of  the  thing  it- 
self. 

Whatever  faults  may  be  found  in  my  own  observa- 
tions regarding  it  have  certainly  not  arisen  from  want 
of  appreciation  of  its  inventor.  Although  decidedly 
dissenting  from  certain  opinions  of  the  late  Professor 
Huxley,  I  have  always  cordially  admired  both  his 
genius  and  character, — ^his  great  gifts  as  a  scientist 
and  man  of  letters,  his  extraordinary  skill  and  lucid- 
ity as  a  teacher,  whether  employing  as  his  instrument 
the  written  word  or  the  living  voice,  his  public  spirit 
and  political  independence,  his  fairness  in  controver- 
sy even  when  at  the  hottest,  his  splendid  courage,  his 
transparent  truthfulness,  his  contempt  for  mean  aims 
and  devices,  and  his  strenuous,  continuous,  and  self- 
sacrificing  devotion  to  the  law  of  duty.  Great  Brit- 
ain may  well  be  proud  to  have  had  such  a  son  as 
Thomas  H.  Huxley.  I  must  reject  any  view  of  his 
which  seems  to  me  erroneous ;  but  the  fact  of  a  view 
being  his  can  never,  I  feel  sure,  be  among  my  motives 
or  reasons  for  rejecting  it. 

II.    AGNOSTICISM    AN    EPISTEMOLOGICAL,    THEORY. 
EQUIVALENT    TO    PHILOSOPHICAL    SCEPTICISM 

Real  as  are  the  difficulties  connected  with  the  use 
of  the  terms  agnostic  and  agnosticism,  I  do  not  regret 
their  invention.  Nor,  although  they  seem  to  me  to 
be  virtually  equivalent  to  sceptic  and  scepticism,  do  I 
consider  them  worthless.     That  Professor  Huxley  in 

10 


LIMITS   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

becoming  their  father,  and  Mr,  Iliitton  in  becoming 
their  godfather,  fully  realised  what  they  were  doing 
is,  I  think,  very  doubtful.  But  I  admit  that,  on  the 
whole,  they  have  thereby  done  more  good  than  harm ; 
that  it  is  not  entirely  without  reason  that  the  words 
in  question  have  become  current  intellectual  coin ; 
that  they  are  by  no  means  entirely  superfluous ;  that 
a  definite  value  can  be  assigned  to  them;  that  they 
may  be  so  employed  as  to  facilitate  the  operations  of 
genuine  thought.  It  would  be  much  to  be  regretted 
were  it  otherwise,  for  obviously  we  cannot  get  rid  of 
them  now.  They  are  in  such  general  use  that  it 
would  be  sheer  folly  to  attempt  to  drive  them  out  of 
circulation.  All  that  can  reasonably  be  done  is  to 
endeavour  to  give  them  the  least  ambiguous  and  most 
appropriate  meanings  we  can ;  to  endeavour  to  get 
them  used  as  generally  as  possible  only  with  those 
meanings;  and  at  the  least  to  make  it  plain  how  we 
are  ourselves  resolved  to  use  them,  and  why.  This 
is  the  task  now  immediately  before  us. 

The  words  under  consideration  are  in  themselves, 
or  etymologically,  ambiguous.  Had  there  been  such 
a  Greek  term  as  ajvcoaTiKO'ijit  would  have  meant,  like 
dyvoyarofi,  imknowing,  or  unknown,  or  unknowable; 
just  as  yv(o<TTiKo<i  signifies  knowing,  known,  or  know- 
able.  It  would  have  referred,  that  is  to  say,  to  a 
subject,  or  an  object,  or  a  possibility ;  might  have 
been  applied  to  a  person  because  ignorant,  to  a  thing 
because  obscure,  unheard  of,  or  forgotten,  and  to  the 
unsearchable,  undiscoverable. 

But  a  knowing  subject  is  quite  distinct  from  a 
11 


THE  NATURE  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

known  object,  and  actual  knowing  and  the  actually 
known  are  quite  distinct  from  possible  knowing  and 
the  knowable.  Similarly  distinct  are  the  unknow- 
ing, the  unknown,  and  the  unknowable.  While,  then, 
agnosticism,  if  its  meaning  is  to  have  any  connection 
with  the  derivation  of  its  name,  must  negate  knowl- 
edge in  one  of  these  relations,  it  also  must,  if  it  is  not 
to  be  essentially  ambiguous  and  misleading,  directly 
negate  them  in  only  one  of  them. 

In  which  of  them  should  it  be?  The  answer  is 
obvious.  No  sane  man  will  waste  his  time  in  devis- 
ing any  theory  as  to  the  limits  of  actual  knowing  and 
the  actually  known.  These  limits  are  individual, 
incidental,  and  variable ;  different  for  every  person ; 
changing  with  every  hour ;  the  same  in  no  two  stages 
of  a  life,  states  of  a  society,  or  ages  of  time.  Tliey 
are  so  manifestly  indeterminable  that  no  one  has  ever 
been  so  foolish  as  to  attempt  to  determine  them. 

But  there. is  a  question  as  to  the  limits  of  knowl- 
edge which  is  far  from  foolish — which  underlies  all 
religion  and  science — which  is  fundamental  in  philos- 
ophy— which  it  is  a  main  part  of  the  business  of 
philosophy  to  deal  with.  It  is  the  question.  What 
are  the  Jmiits  of  knowledge.inhereTit  in  the  very  con- 
stitution and  laws  of  the  b.uman_intellect  ?  What 
can  man,  from  the  very  nature  of  his  powers  of  cog- 
nition, not  know,  and  what,  with  these  powers,  may 
he  hope  to  know  ? 

That  is  the  question  to  which  agnosticism  is  an 
answer — and  the  only  question.  All  agnosticism 
is  there,  in  the  nature  of  its  answer.     Much  else 

12 


AGIS^OSTICISM  A  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE 

may  be  associated  with  it,  but  whatever  properly  be- 
longs to  it  is  included  in  its  response  to  the  aforesaid 
question.  It  is  a  view  or  theory  as  to  what  man 
can  and  cannot  know — as  to  the  inherent  and  consti- 
tutive limits  of  human  cognition. 

We  know,  then,  so  far  what  agnosticism  is.  It  is  a 
theory  as  to  the  limits  of  human  knowledge.  And 
knowing  this,  we  know  what  is  very  important  for  us 
in  our  present  undertaking  clearly  and  fully  to  real- 
ise. We  know  that  we  are  to  have  to  do  with  a  theory 
which,  in  whatever  form  it  may  present  itself,  and 
however  erroneous  it  may  seem  to  us  in  various  or  all 
of  its  forms  to  be,  is  entitled  to  be  treated  by  us  with 
seriousness  and  respect.  From  its  very  nature  it  is 
not  an  intellectual  caprice  or  superficial  opinion  or 
vulgar  prejudice.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  an  answer  to 
the  most  rational,  the  most  comprehensive,  and  the 
most  important  question  which  man  as  an  intellectual 
being  can  ask  himself.  To  fail  in  answering4;he  ques- 
tion aright  is  no  disgrace,  for  the  question  is  a  pro- 
found and  very  difficult  one.  To  try  to  answer  it  is 
of  itself  honourable,  and  a  sure  sign  of  mental  su- 
periority. I  hope  to  bear  this  in  mind  from  the  begin- 
ning to  the  end  of  my  task.  The  only  persons  whom 
I  mean  to  call,  or  deem  entitled  to  call  themselves, 
agnostics,  are  men  of  thought  and  talent,  endowed 
with  the  insight  and  faculty  which  enable  them  to 
form  an  independent  judgment  on  the  most  profound, 
far-reaching,  and  practically  influential  of  philosoph- 
ical problems ;  and  I  desire  to  treat  them  with  the 
respect  to  which  such  men  are  entitled. 

13 


THE  NATUKE   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

Agnosticism,  however,  cannot  be  merely  what  has 
just  been  stated.  Philosophers  of  all  kinds  and 
schools  now  admit  the  necessity  of  having  clear  views 
of  the  nature  and  limits  of  knowledge.  The  chief 
revolutions  in  the  history  of  philosophy  have  been 
those  which  turned  on  the  answers  given  by  Socrates 
and  Plato,  Descartes,  Locke,  and  Kant,  to  the  ques- 
tion, What  can  man  know  ?  And  at  the  present  day 
philosophers  of  every  shade  and  tendency  of  thought 
are  at  one  in  seeking  to  base  their  systems  on  some 
doctrine  of  cognition.  They  are  all  more  or  less 
epistemologists.  They  are  not  all,  however,  agnos- 
tics. Agnostics  compose  even  a  small  minority 
among  them.  While,  then,  to  say  that  agnosticism 
is  a  theory  as  to  the  limits  of  knowledge — a  theory, 
as  the  etymology  of  the  name  itself  indicates,  nega- 
tive of  ability,  and  consequently  affirmative  of  inabil- 
ity, to  know — is  true  so  far  as  it  goes,  it  obviously 
falls  short  of  defining  agnosticism.  It  does  not  dis- 
tinguish it  from  non-agnostic  and  anti-agnostic  theo- 
ries. It  gives  us  its  generic  notion,  but  leaves  us 
without  its  specific  notion.  Its  differentia  has  still 
to  be  found. 

What  is  it  ?  What  kind  of  theory  as  to  the  limits 
of  human  knowledge  is  agnosticism  ?  This  question 
may  very  probably  not  appear  difficult  of  an  answer 
either  to  agnostics  or  their  opponents,  but  it  is  hope- 
less to  expect  that  agnostics  and  their  opponents  can 
agree  as  to  what  the  answer  should  be.  The  more 
clearly  this  is  seen  the  better,  j^othing  l)ut  confusion 
and  error  can  follow  from  those  who  hold  opposite 

14 


OF  CLASSES  OF  DEFINITION 

views  of  the  nature  of  anything  attempting  either  to 
start  from  or  to  arrive  at  the  same  definition  of  it.  So 
long  as  they  take  entirely  opposite  views  of  it,  they 
ought  to  define  it  in  opposite  ways.  Wherever  men 
are  disputing  not  ignorantly  and  vaguely  but  from 
clear  and  definite  conviction,  instead  of  its  being,  as  is 
often  said,  their  first  duty  to  come  to  agreement  as  to 
the  definition  of  the  subject  in  dispute,  that  is  mani- 
festly impossible,  and  their  real  duty  obviously  is  to 
state  clearly  and  explictly  their  opposite  views.  But 
that  must  be  equivalent  to  giving  opposing  definitions. 
And  the  whole  aim  of  the  argumentation  of  each  dis- 
putant must  necessarily  be  to  show  that  his  definition 
is  the  right  one,  and  his  opponent's  definition  a  wrong 
one. 

I  am  not  laying  down,  it  will  be  observed,  a  gen- 
eral rule  of  definition,  but  one  limited  to  a  class  of 
definitions, — definitions  of  things  as  to  the  very  nat- 
ures of  which  there  is  a  direct  and  distinct  contrariety 
of  views.  It  does  not  apply,  for  example,  to  mathe- 
matical or  empirical  definitions — definitions,  say,  of 
geometrical  figures  or  of  species  of  plants  or  animals 
— for  in  regard  to  these  there  is  agreement  both  as  to 
the  generic  and  specific  character  of  the  things  to 
which  they  relate.  But  it  applies  to  all  definitions 
of  things  of  which  the  very  differentia  seems  to  one 
class  of  persons  to  be  a  truth,  a  virtue,  a  grace,  a  right 
mean,  and  to  another  class  an  error,  a  vice,  a  deform- 
ity, an  excess  or  defect ;  or,  in  other  words,  to  all  def- 
initions of  things,  as  to  the  natures  of  which  plainly 
contrary  logical,  ethical,  or  aesthetic  judgments  are 

15 


THE  NATURE  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

held.  Intelligent  and  serious  antagonists  cannot  rea- 
sonably be  expected  to  agree  in  the  acceptance  and  use 
of  definitions  of  this  order. 

I  have  elsewhere  had  occasion  to  insist  on  this  truth 
when  treating  of  socialism.^  An  enlightened  and 
convinced  opponent  and  an  enlightened  and  con- 
vinced adherent  of  socialism  cannot  agree  in  their 
definitions  of  it.  If  the  former  did  not  believe  so- 
cialism to  be  a  theory  of  society  in  which  the  rights 
and  liberties  of  individuals  are  sacrificed  to  the  de- 
mands of  the  commimity,  he  would  not  be  an  oppo- 
nent of  it ;  if  the  latter  did  not  suppose  it  to  be  a  sys- 
tem in  which  the  community  would  only  exercise  a 
just  and  reasonable  control  over  individuals,  he  would 
not  be  an  adherent  of  it.  They  ought  to  agree, 
therefore,  to  differ  in  their  definitions ;  and  each 
ought  to  feel  himself  bound  to  show  that  his  definition 
is  alone  justified  by  the  relevant  facts  or  instances. 
If,  instead  of  this,  they  are  led  by  the  logical  super- 
stition as  to  the  necessity  of  disputants  starting  with 
the  same  definitions  to  strive  to  devise  a  definition  of 
socialism  in  which  they  think  they  may  agree,  what 
will  happen  ?  Just  what  has  happened  to  a  deplora- 
ble extent :  time  and  thought  will  be  wasted  in  devis- 
ing definitions  either  uselessly  vague — so  vague  that 
there  is  no  indication  of  the  differentia  of  socialism 
in  them — or  Imrtfully  equivocal,  the  socialist  having 
managed  to  imply,  without  expressly  asserting,  ap- 
proval, and  the  non-socialist  disapproval,  of  social- 
ism, but  no  more.  All  such  definitions  are  hin- 
'  Author's  Socialism,  ch.  i. 
10 


AGNOSTIC   DEFINITION  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

d ranees  to  clear  and  honest  reasoning.  So  far  as  my 
acquaintance  with  definitions  of  socialism  goes  the 
great  majority  of  them  may  be  placed  under  one  or 
other  of  these  two  heads. 

Now  the  differentia — the  distinctive  characteristic 
- — of  agnosticism  can  only  be,  in  the  view  of  every  one 
who  is  not  an  agnostic,  that  as  a  theory  of  the  limits 
of  knowledge  it  represents  these  limits  as  more  con- 
tracted than  they  really  are.  In  other  words,  from 
any  non-agnostic  standpoint,  agnosticism  must  seem 
to  be  the  theory  of  knowledge  which  ends  in  doubt  or 
disbelief  of  some  or  all  of  the  powers  of  knowing 
possessed  by  the  human  mind.  Such  is  agnosticism 
as  I  understand  it ;  and  it  is,  I  think,  what  every  one 
not  an  agnostic,  if  he  will  take  the  trouble  to  think 
clearly,  must  understand  by  it. 

But,  of  course,  no  agnostic  can  accept  this  account, 
this  definition,  of  it.  He  cannot  admit  that  the  hu- 
man mind  really  possesses  any  power  of  knowledge, 
the  existence  of  which,  or  at  least  the  certainty  of  the 
possession  of  which,  he  denies.  To  do  so  would  be 
plainly  equivalent  to  an  acknowledgment  that  his 
denial  was  unwarranted.  He  must  maintain,  there- 
fore, that  the  only  powers  of  knowledge  which  he 
denies  to  the  mind  are  powers  which  it  may  fancy 
itself  to  possess  but  which  it  really  does  not  possess. 
Hence  he  can  only  define  agnosticism  as  the  theory 
of  knoAvledge  which  teaches  us  to  doubt  of,  or  dis- 
believe in,  a  power  or  powers  of  knowing  which  the 
mind  is  erroneously  supposed  to  possess.  In  other 
words,  he  can  only  be  satisfied  Avith  a  definition  of 

17 


\ 


THE  NATURE  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

agnosticism  which  implies  that  it  is  the  only  true  and 
reasonable  theory  of  knowledge. 

But,  then,  such  a  definition  no  opponent  of  agnos- 
ticism can  accept.  To  do  so  would  be  to  acknowledge 
himself  an  enemy  of  truth  and  reason.  Thus,  in  this 
respect,  the  definition  of  agnosticism  by  its  adherents 
is,  if  no  worse,  also  no  better  than  its  definition  by  its 
non-adherents. 

And  in  another  respect  it  is  even  altogether  infe- 
rior. It  has  no  rational  relation  whatever  to  the  ety- 
mology of  the  word  of  which  it  professes  to  be  the 
definition.  Etymologically  agnosticism  indicates  ne- 
gation of  knowledge  or  of  power  of  knowledge;  but 
by  the  definition  of  agnostics  it  indicates  nothing  of 
the  kind ;  nay,  it  indicates  the  contrary, — negation  of 
the  illusion  of  knowledge  and  of  fancied  poiuer  of 
knowledge.  If  they  are  right  in  their  definition, 
quite  a  different  term  should  manifestly  have  been 
invented  to  convey  correctly  to  the  mind  what  they 
wish  it  to  mean.  If  agnosticism  be  what  they  de- 
scribe it  to  be,  then  when  they  call  themselves  agnos- 
tics they  act  as  unwisely  as  a  theist  would  do  were  he 
to  call  himself  an  atheist  in  order  to  testify  that  he 
was  not  a  pantheist  or  a  polytheist.  Indeed,  for  any 
one  who  admits  the  possibility  of  knowledge  and  holds 
that  he  denies  to  the  mind  no  real  power  of  knowl- 
edge to  call  himself  an  agnostic  is,  in  Avord  at  least, 
expressly  to  contradict  himself.  The  terms  agnostic 
and  agnosticism  are  terms  which  one  can  easily  con- 
ceive many  may  feel  quite  justified  in  applying  to 
other  persons  and  to  systems  which  they  deem  erro- 

18 


EELATIVITY  OF   DEFINITION 

neons,  but  which  it  is  strange  that  many  who  are  not 
specially  conscious  of  ignorance  or  uncertainty  should 
be  found  to  accept  as  appropriate  designations  for 
themselves  and  for  their  convictions.  And  certainly 
those  who  call  themselves  agnostics,  adherents  of  ag- 
nosticism, merely  because  they  maintain  that  men 
very  generally  fancy  the  powers  of  human  knowledge 
to  be  greater  than  they  are,  do  themselves  at  least 
as  much  injustice  by  their  appropriation  of  the  terms 
as  their  opponents  are  likely  to  do  by  any  other  mis- 
application of  them. 

Two  things  seem  to  follow  from  the  foregoing  con- 
siderations :  a  right  and  a  duty.  The  right  is,  to  de- 
fine agnosticism  frankly  and  avowedly  from  one's 
own  point  of  view.  It  is  in  vain  for  a  non-agnostic 
to  seek  to  find  a  definition  of  agnosticism  which  will 
satisfy  an  agnostic.  Any  definition  of  agnosticism 
which  will  satisfy  an  agnostic  must  of  necessity  fail 
to  satisfy  a  non-agnostic.  The  agnostic  cannot  clear- 
ly or  honestly  express  what  he  means  by  agnosticism 
except  in  terms  which  are,  at  least  implicitly,  eulogis- 
tic, nor  the  non-agnostic  his  conception  of  it  other- 
wise than  in  terms  which  are,  at  least  implicitly,  dys- 
logistic. It  has  been  said  that  words  of  the  class  to 
which  agnosticism  belongs  "  may  be  defined,  in  a 
more  objective  way,  as  particular  kinds  of  tenden- 
cy "  ;  but  incorrectly.  There  can  be  no  real  and 
profitable  definition  of  any  such  term  unless  the  par- 
ticular tendency  which  is  supposed  to  be  differential 
of  what  the  term  denotes  is  specified ;  and  there  can 
be  no  such  specification  which  is  not  implicitly  eulo- 

19 


THE  NATUEE   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

gistic  from  those  who  regard  it  as  a  true,  right,  or 
useful  tendency,  or  which  is  not  implicitly  dyslogistic 
from  those  who  regard  it  as  a  false,  wrong,  or  hurtful 
tendency.  True  and  false,  right  and  wrong,  good 
and  evil,  cannot  be  defined  save  in  terms  explicitly  eu- 
logistic or  dyslogistic;  nor  tendencies  to  them  other- 
wise than  in  terms  which  are  at  least  implicitly  eulo- 
gistic or  dyslogistic. 

I  claim,  and  intend  to  exercise,  the  right  indicated. 
But,  of  course,  I  recognise  that  my  definition  must 
therefore  be  like  my  point  of  view,  a  relative  and 
personal  one.  What  seems  to  me  to  be  agnosticism 
will  not  seem  so,  in  my  sense  of  the  term,  to  those 
whom  I  regard  as  agnostics;  and,  on  the  other  hand, 
my  own  views  must  appear  to  be  agnostic  to  those 
whom  I  deem  gnostics,  inasmuch  as  they  assign  to  the 
human  mind  powers  of  knowledge  which  I  do  not 
believe  it  to  possess. 

The  duty  which  corresponds  to  the  right  just  men- 
tioned is  that  of  not  judging  of  any  system  which 
one  deals  with  as  agnostic  merely  by  the  definition 
which  one  gives  of  agnosticism.  Definitions  are 
made  to  be  judged,  and  should  not  be  appealed  to  as 
judges.  This  cannot  reasonably  be  denied  whenever 
their  relative  and  subjective  character  is  acknowl- 
edged ;  whenever  they  are  avowedly  the  expressions  of 
an  individual's  judgment,  and  deliberately  opposed  by 
him  to  those  at  which"  other  individuals  have  arrived. 
In  all  such  cases  to  judge  by  one's  own  definition  is 
manifestly  to  judge  in  one's  own  favour. 

Take  again  socialism  as  an  illustration.  If  not  a 
20 


ILLUSTRATION  OF  SOCIALISM 

socialist,  one  must,  as  I  have  said,  define  socialism  in 
a  way  which  will  imply  that  it  necessarily  involves 
injustice  to  individuals.  The  socialist  will  be  apt  to 
say  that  in  doing  so  you  start  with  the  assumption 
that  socialism  is  false  and  wrong,  in  order,  by  means 
of  the  assumption,  to  condemn  it  as  such ;  and  the 
.charge  will  be  justified  if  you  really  judge  of  the 
character  of  any  so-called  socialistic  system  by  your 
definition  of  socialism.  But  that  is  what  no  reason- 
able and  fair-minded  man  will  do.  Such  a  man  will 
examine  any  system  on  its  own  merits,  and  decide 
by  an  unbiassed  examination  of  it  as  it  is  in  itself 
whether  or  not  it  does  injustice  to  individuals;  and 
all  that  he  will  do  with  his  definition  will  be  to  de- 
termine whether,  when  compared  with  it,  the  system 
in  question  is  to  be  called  socialistic  or  not  in  the 
sense  which  he  attaches  to  the  term  socialistic.  In 
this  there  is  nothing  unfair  or  unreasonable:  it  is 
not  judging  of  socialism  by  an  unfavourable  defini- 
tion of  it,  but  only  deciding  after  an  investigation, 
which  may  be  and  should  be  uninfluenced  by  the 
definition,  whether  the  definition  be  applicable  or 
not. 

It  is  thus  that  I  mean  to  deal  with  agnosticism.  I 
require  to  examine  its  chief  phases,  and  to  criticise 
the  principles  on  which  it  has  proceeded  and  the  con- 
clusions which  it  has  reached  in  the  different  forms 
it  has  assumed.  In  doing  so  I  shall,  of  course,  treat 
only  of  such  views  or  doctrines  as  seem  to  me  to  deny 
to  the  mind  poweVs  of  knowledge  which  it  really  pos- 
sesses.    But  for  holding  any  of  those  views  or  doc- 

21 


THE  NATURE  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

trines  to  be  thus  erroneous  I  shall  feel  bound  to  ad- 
duce good  and  sufficient  reasons;  and  mj  definition 
of  agnosticism  will  never,  I  hope,  be  found  among  my 
reasons.  It  can  merely  justify  my  treating  under 
the  name  of  agnosticism  those  theories  which  are 
found  by  adequate  and  impartial  investigation  to 
have  the  distinctive  characteristic  which  it  assigns  to 
agnosticism.  It  is  not  a  premiss  to  be  reasoned  from, 
but  a  conclusion  which  the  non-agnostic  has  to  main- 
tain and  the  agnostic  to  assail. 

The  term  agnosticism  then  is,  in  my  opinion,  only 
accurately  and  appropriately  employed  when  regard- 
ed as  equivalent  for  what  has  been  variously  called 
philosophical,  or  theoretical,  or  metaphysical  scepti- 
cism, or  simply  scepticism.  It  is  the  theory  of  the 
nature  and  liniits  of  human  intelligence  which  ques- 
tions either  the  certainty  of  all  knowledge  and  the 
veracity  of  every  mental  power,  or  the  certainty  of 
some  particular  kind  of  knowledge  and  the  veracity 
of  some  particular  mental  power  or  powers.  The 
limitation  of  the  word  to  the  sphere  of  religion  is 
quite  unjustifiable.  There  is  no  reason  for  calling 
a  man  an  agnostic  merely  because  he  is  an  atheist 
or  a  positivist  or  a  materialist.  The  name  is  appro- 
priate, indeed,  to  one  whose  refusal  to  believe  in  the 
existence  of  God  and  of  spiritual  things  is  rested  on 
the  ground  that  the  human  mind  is  inherently  and 
constitutionally  incapable  of  knowing  whether  there 
are  a  God  and  spiritual  things  or  not.  But  there  is 
no  kind  of  truth  which  may  not  be  rejected  on  the 
ground  that  the  human  mind  is  inherently  and  con- 

22 


A  PHILOSOPHICAL  SCEPTICISM 

stitutionally  incapable  of  ascertaining  whether  or  not 
there  is  such  truth. 

The  weakness  of  the  human  mind  is  a  plea  which 
may  be  brought  forward  in  any  region  of  inquiry; 
and  the  plea  is  the  same  whatever  be  the  region  in 
which  it  is  brought  forward.  Things,  however,  which 
have  the  same  nature  should  have  the  same  name. 
Hence  wherever  assent  is  withheld  because  of  the  al- 
leged incompetency  of  the  mind  to  ascertain  the  truth 
the  name  agnosticism  is  applicable.  The  rejection 
of  any  kind  of  truth  on  that  ground  is  as  much  agnos- 
ticism as  the  rejection  of  any  other  kind.  What  is 
essential  and  invariable  in  agnosticism  is  the  reason 
on  which  it  supports  itself,  the  attitude  assumed  to- 
wards truth  and  knowledge.  What  is  non-essential 
and  variable  in  it  are  the  objects  or  propositions  to 
which  it  refers. 

Some  have  represented  the  scepticism  which  may 
appropriately  be  called  agnosticism  as  disbelief  of  the 
attainability  of  truth.  Others  contend  that  it  should 
be  confined  to  doubt.  For  reasons  hereafter  to  be 
indicated,  I  hold  that  it  may  be  either  doubt  or  dis- 
belief. Xot,  however,  either  merely  doubt  or  disbe- 
lief, but  the  doubt  or  disbelief  which  rests  on  the  sup- 
position that  what  are  really  powers  of  the  human 
mind  are  untrustworthy ;  that  what  are  actually  nor- 
mal perceptions,  natural  or  even  necessary  laws  and 
legitimate  processes,  are  not  to  be  depended  on.  Or- 
dinary doubt  and  ordinary  disbelief  have  their  rea- 
sons in  the  objects  or  propositions  examined  by  the 
mind,  not  in  distrust  of  the  mind  itself.     They  imply 

23 


THE  NATURE  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

nothing  more  than  the  conviction  of  the  absence  of 
evidence  for,  or  the  existence  of  evidence  against,  the 
particular  position  in  dispute ;  but  agnosticism  chal- 
lenges evidence,  and  refuses  to  be  convinced  by  it,  on 
the  deeper  and  subtler  ground  that  the  mind  is  inher- 
ently incapable  of  deriving  truth  or  certainty  from 
what  seemingly  presents  even  the  strongest  claims  to 
be  regarded  as  evidence. 


III.  AGNOSTICISM  AND  GNOSTICISM 

Agnosticism  may  be  directly  opposed  to  gnosti- 
cism ;  it  may  be  regarded  as  the  contrary  extreme. 
The  word  gnosticism  has  been  long  in  use.  It  was 
first  employed  to  denote  a  remarkable  class  or  group 
of  philosophico-religious  systems  which  were  some- 
what widely  diffused  in  the  first  centuries  of  the 
Christian  era.  The  adherents  of  these  systems  sup- 
posed themselves  to  have  a  gnosis  or  knowledge  of  a 
deeper  and  more  precious  kind  than  other  men.  Re- 
garding the  divine  nature,  the  invisible  world,  mat- 
ter and  spirit,  evil  and  redemption,  they  confidently 
promulgated  as  the  surest,  highest,  and  most  salutary 
knowledge  speculations  for  which  they  adduced  no 
evidence  perceptible  or  intelligible  to  the  understand- 
ings of  other  men.  They  assumed  to  themselves  the 
name  of  gnostics  {yvwariKoi) ,  because  they  claimed 
to  have  an  insight  into  truth  such  as  no  other  philo- 
sophical or  religious  teachers  had  attained.  But 
naturally  the  claim  was  not  admitted  by  their  oppo- 
nents, and  least  of  all  by  the  Christian  theologians 

24 


RELATION  TO   GNOSTICISM 

who  held  that  in  Jesus  were  hid  all  the  treasures  of 
wisdom  and  knowledge.  For  an  Irenaeus  and  Hip- 
polytus  the  self-styled  gnostic  was  accordingly  a  man 
who  taught  as  knowledge  "  knowledge  falsely  so- 
called," — what  was  not  known  and  could  not  be 
known  as  knowledge.  In  their  eyes  the  enlightened 
Christian  was  the  true  gnostic.  At  the  same  time, 
it  was  seen  by  the  opponents  of  those  who  called  them- 
selves gnostics  that  the  most  convenient  way  of  des- 
ignating them  was  by  the  name  which  they  had  as- 
sumed ;  that  nothing  was  conceded  to  them  or  could 
be  gained  by  them  thereby;  that  although  by  their 
appropriation  of  the  name  they  claimed  to  be  the  ex- 
clusive possessors  of  the  highest  knowledge,  the  same 
name  when  applied  to  them  by  others  would  only 
mean  that  they  were  pretenders  to  an  unattainable 
knowledge,  wise  only  in  their  own  eyes. 

The  mode  of  thought  called  gnostic,  however,  had 
appeared  long  before  a  name  for  it  had  been  invented. 
Hence  the  gnostics  just  referred  to  had  not  been 
without  precursors  in  the  hierophants  and  philoso- 
phers of  the  ancient  world.  And  they  have  had  many 
successors;  nor  is  their  race  yet  extinct.  Wherever 
there  is  mysticism,  with  its  ecstatic  conditions  of 
spirit  and  claims  to  special  illuminations  and  super- 
natural visions,  there  also  must  what  is  akin  to  the 
gnosticism  which  disturbed  the'  peace  of  the  early 
Christian  Church  be  found,  and  mysticism  is  a  foun- 
tain fed  from  perennial  springs.  Scotus  Erigena  and 
Jacob  Boelime  were  as  confident  of  knowing  the  un- 
knowable as  Basilides  and  Valentinus  had  been.     In 

25 


THE  NATURE  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

quite  recent  times  Germany  has  produced  and  nour- 
ished a  number  of  far-famed  systems  of  theological 
and  philosophical  speculation  thoroughly  gnostic  in 
character,  inasmuch  as  professing  to  disclose  and 
demonstrate  things  which  are  really  beyond  human 
ken.  The  follies  of  spiritualism,  with  which  the 
present  generation  has  been  so  familiar,  have  arisen 
in  a  large  measure  from  eager  desire  to  penetrate  into 
the  world  beyond  the  grave,  conjoined  with  the  belief 
that,  although  this  could  not  be  effected  by  following 
the  ordinary  and  recognised  routes  to  knowledge,  it 
might  by  proceeding  along  secret  and  private  paths. 
It  is  only  too  certain  that  presumption  and  error  of  a 
gnostic  kind  are  largely  mingled  with  the  thoughts  of 
most  men;  and  that  they  feel  confident  of  knowing 
about  God  and  the  universe,  about  the  mysteries  of 
the  present  and  the  future  life,  not  only  far  more  than 
they  actually  know,  but  far  more  than  with  their  pres- 
ent powers  and  means  of  knowledge  they  can  know. 
A  gnostic  may  be  described,  then,  as  one  who  at- 
tributes to  the  human  mind  more  power  of  attaining 
truth  than  it  actually  possesses;  and  an  agnostic  as 
one  who  will  not  allow  that  the  human  mind  possesses 
as  much  power  of  acquiring  knowledge  as  it  really 
has.  Thus  viewed  both  the  gnostic  and  agnostic  err, 
but  in  opposite  directions.  The  former  has  too  much 
confidence,  and  the  latter  has  too  little  trust.  Pre- 
sumption, rashness, .  irreverence,  are  the  faults  with 
which  the  gnostic  is  chargeable ;  timidity,  indecision, 
and  suspiciousness  are  those  characteristic  of  the  ag- 
nostic.    The  aim  of  every  thinker  should  be  to  avoid 

26 


BOTH  EERONEOUS 

falling  into  wliat  in  either  is  erroneous  and  evil. 
Gnosticism  and  agnosticism  are,  as  it  were,  two  dan- 
gerous rocks — a  Scylla  and  a  Charybdis — which  each 
man  who  embarks  in  quest  of  truth  on  the  ocean  of 
speculation  will  find  ahead  of  him  on  his  right  and 
on  his  left ;  and  if  he  would  ever  attain  the  end  and 
object  of  his  voyage  he  must  steer  between  them, 
carefully  shunning  both.  In  medio  tutissimus. 
This  is  the  ideal,  but  no  one  is  likely  not  to  deviate  to 
some  extent  from  the  track  of  perfect  safety.  Hardly 
any  thinker  is  not  either  too  bold  ot  too  timid,  and 
the  winds  and  waves  are  always  setting  powerfully 
towards  the  one  danger  or  the  other,  so  that  it  is  rare 
that  any  one  escapes  without  injury,  and  not  wonder- 
ful that  some  are  wholly  wrecked. 

The  faults,  it  will  be  observed,  both  of  the  gnostic 
and  agnostic,  are  closely  connected  with  good  quali- 
ties. If  not  virtues  in  excess,  they  are  excesses  of 
the  same  qualities  from  which  virtues  are  formed. 
The  over-confidence  and  credulity  of  the  gnostic  tes- 
tify to  an  intellectual  courage  and  a  trust  in  truth 
which,  when  duly  enlightened  and  regulated,  are 
high  merits.  The  hesitancy  and  suspiciousness  of 
the  agnostic  are  the  exaggerations  of  an  intellectual 
vigilance  and  caution  which  well  deserves  commen- 
dation. In  endeavouring,  therefore,  to  avoid  the 
faults  alike  of  gnosticism  and  agnosticism,  we  should 
be  careful  not  to  surrender  or  sacrifice  the  good  qual- 
ities which  they  exaggerate  or  stimulate.  On  the 
contrary,  we  should  anxiously  seek  to  retain  them, 
ana  in  their  proper  relationship,  so  that  they  may 

27 


THE  NATURE   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

serve  alike  as  counteractive  of  and  supplementary  to 
one  another.  We  ninst  not,  for  example,  cast  away 
either  the  intellectual  courage  of  the  gnostic  or 
the  intellectual  caution  of  the  agnostic,  but  must 
strive  to  possess  and  exercise  them  in  due  pro- 
portion and  true  union,  so  that  instead  of  being  sep- 
arate, exaggerated,  and  antagonistic,  they  may  coa- 
lesce, harmonise,  and  co-operate. 

From  the  very  nature  of  truth  want  of  the  virtues 
which  relate  to  it  is  a  most  terrible  want.  Truth  is 
a  matter  of  primary  importance  to  us.  It  is  the 
very  sustenance  of  the  spirit.  It  is  the  source  and 
support  of  rational  and  moral  life.  It  is  to  the  mind 
what  light  is  to  the  eye,  what  food  is  to  the  body.  It 
is  the  condition  of  all  real  progress  and  prosperity 
alike  for  individuals  and  societies.  There  is  nothing 
higher  or  better  than  truth ;  nay,  there  is  nothing 
noble  or  good  except  what  is  true.  There  is  nothing 
to  be  preferred  to  truth ;  nay,  there  is  nothing  which 
ought  not  to  be  sacrificed  if  found  to  be  contrary  to 
truth.  God  is  not  higher  than  truth,  but  is  the  truth, 
and  he  who  doubts,  disbelieves,  or  denies  the  truth, 
thereby  doubts,  disbelieves,  and  denies  God.  "  The 
inquiry  of  truth,"  says  Bacon,  "  which  is  the  love- 
making  or  wooing  of  it — ^-the  knowledge  of  truth, 
which  is  the  presence  of  it — and  the  belief  of  truth, 
which  is  the  enjoying  of  it — is  the  sovereign  good  of 
human  nature."  Only  where  the  love  of  truth  is  su- 
preme can  human  character  answer  to  any  worthy 
idea  of  what  it  ought  to  be.  If  a  man  love  the  truth, 
he  will  be  candid,  sincere,  impartial,  generous,  and 

28 


FAITH  AND   DOUBT 

aspire  after  purity  and  perfection;  if  he  be  content 
with  falsehood,  or  any  substitute  for  truth,  he  con- 
demns himself  to  meanness  and  baseness  of  mind,  to 
unfairness  and  dishonesty  of  disposition,  to  duplicity 
and  deceitf  ulness  of  conduct. 

Because  truth  is  thus  of  essential  and  supreme  sig- 
nificance to  us,  it  is  of  vast  importance  that  we  should 
not  doubt  or  despair  either  of  its  existence  or  of  its 
attainability.  Without  faith  that  truth  is,  and  with- 
out hope  that  it  may  be  found  by  those  who  will  seek 
it  carefully  and  earnestly,  it  will  not  be  so  sought,  and 
therefore  will  not  be  found.  Wherever  truth  is, 
and  is  to  be  found,  it  is  obviously  a  great  misfortune 
not  to  be  hopeful  of  finding  it — not  to  be  able  to  go 
forth  to  the  search  and  conquest  of  it  with  good  cour- 
age: a  great  misfortune,  and  the  necessary  source  of 
sore  loss  and  much  unhappiness.  To  distrust  and 
despair  of  truth  is  the  sure  way  to  miss  the  truth  we 
might  otherwise  reach,  and  all  the  good  dependent  on 
that  truth.  A  sceptical  and  pessimist  spirit  pun- 
ishes itself  by  fulfilling  its  own  doubts  and  fears. 

On  the  other  hand,  caution  is  as  necessary  in  the 
quest  of  truth  as  courage,  seeing  that,  while  truth 
is  so  essential  and  important,  errors  are  even  more 
numerous  than  truths,  and  credulity  is  far  more  com- 
mon than  scepticism.  Man's  first  impressions  of 
things  are  rarely  just.  Very  few  of  his  primitive 
beliefs  commend  themselves  to  the  reason  of  his  later 
years.  Ordinary  opinion  is  almost  always  too  rash 
and  positive.  The  firmest  convictions  of  the  multi- 
tude are  often  the  most  baseless  prejudices.     The  du- 

29 


THE  NATUKE   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

ration  of  the  ages  of  faith  in  history  has  greatly 
exceeded  that  of  those  of  doubt.  But  have  they  been 
ages  of  light,  of  sound  judgment,  of  honest  research  ? 
The  truths  which  science  has  established  are  mostly 
of  recent  date,  and  hardly  one  of  them  has  been 
proved  otherwise  than  through  the  disproof  of  many 
ancient  errors.  The  progress  of  philosophy  has  been 
painfully  slow,  and  has  consisted  rather  in  the  appre- 
hension of  problems  than  in  the  attainment  of  solu- 
tions. It  is  impossible  to  look  back  along  the  history 
of  religion,  or  even  over  the  religious  world  of  the 
present  day,  without  having  to  acknowledge  that  a 
too  critical  temper  has  certainly  not  been  a  character- 
istic of  humanity.  Not  agnosticism  but  gnosticism 
— ^not  scepticism  but  dogmatism — is  the  favourite 
"  ism."  The  best  excuse  for  the  excess  of  unbelief 
which  exists  is  the  far  greater  excess  of  belief. 
Where  the  many  are  so  foolishly  ready  to  believe,  the 
few  who  are  unduly  slow  to  believe  should  not  be 
hastily  or  harshly  condemned. 

It  would  be  erroneous  and  unwise,  therefore,  to 
take  up  a  merely  unsympathetic  and  hostile  attitude 
towards  agnosticism.  That  system  is  not  devoid  of 
truth  but  the  exaggeration  of  truth,  not  wholly  evil 
but  evil  by  excess.  Fully  to  recognise  this  is  incum- 
bent on  every  student  of  agnosticism.  And,  I  must 
add,  it  is  especially  so  on  one  who  desires,  in  endeav- 
ouring to  understand  it,  to  keep  prominently  in  view 
its  relations  to  religion. 

For  religion  is  by  no  means  unlikely  to  make  men 
blind  or  unjust  to  what  is  true  and  good  in  agnosti- 

30 


HISTORIC   FAITH 

cisiii.  Not  unnaturally  the  teachers  and  preachers 
of  religion  are  specially  prone  to  exaggerate  the  merit 
of  helief  and  faith,  and  to  depreciate  and  denounce 
unbelief  and  doubt.  Religion  springs  from  belief; 
its  strength  is  the  strength  of  faith.  It  spreads  and 
flourishes  through  the  enthusiasm  begotten  of  belief 
or  faith.  The  lower  religions  show  the  wonderful 
■fertility  of  credulity.  The  greatest  and  highest  re- 
ligions all  appeal  at  their  origin  to  the  faculty  of 
faith,  and  with  a  success  shown  by  the  conversion  of 
multitudes  at  once.  As  on  trust  in  Christ  all  Chris- 
tianity depends,  so  on  trust  in  Mohammed  all  Mo- 
hammedanism depends,  and  on  trust  in  Buddha  all 
Buddhism.  Faith  has  raised  all  these  religions,  and 
is  their  life,  and  the  life  of  all  that  has  been  evolved 
from  them.  There  is  thus  in  the  history  of  religions 
abundant  testimony  to  the  power  of  faith,  and  expla- 
nation enough  of  the  eulogies  which  have  been  heaped 
upon  faith  by  religious  men. 

But  there  is  another  side  of  things.  If  faith  be 
strong  and  have  done  great  works,  doubt  is  not  feeble 
and  has  wrought  many  achievements  by  no  means 
contemptible.  If  faith  have  raised  religions,  doubt 
has  often  thrown  them  down,  and  in  all  of  them  has 
found  much  to  eliminate  and  destroy.  If  theologians 
often  speak  as  if  all  duty  were  summed  up  in  religious 
faith,  scientists  and  philosophers  often  speak  as  if  the 
very  root  and  spring  of  all  progress  and  culture  were 
scientific  and  philosophic  doubt.  The  great  revolu- 
tions of  speculative  thought  at  least  have  all  origi- 
nated in  extensions  of  the  operations  of  doubt.     A 

31 


THE  NATURE   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

believing  enthusiastic  type  of  character  is  the  one 
most  generally  admired,  and  is  snp^wsed  to  be  one  of 
special  excellence  and  strength.  The  doubting,  ques- 
tioning type  of  character  is  generally  viewed  with 
decided  disfavour,  and  deemed  culpable  and  weak. 
But  such  an  estimate  is  plainly  one-sided  and  super- 
ficial. To  withhold  belief  may  show  as  much  virtue 
and  strength  as  to  give  it.  Socrates  and  Plato,  Car- 
neades  and  Aenesidemus,  Descartes  and  Locke,  Hume 
and  Kant,  and  many  others,  in  whose  characters  the 
quality  of  doubt  was  largely  present,  were  unques- 
tionably very  superior  men, — men  who  could  brave 
the  world's  antagonism,  and  who  singly  did  as  much 
for  the  world's  advancement  as  many  thousands  of 
burning  enthusiasts  combined  have  done. 

A  great  deal  might  be  said  on  behalf  of  doubt  and 
doubters.  But  I  am  not  going  to  constitute  myself 
their  apologist,  any  more  than  the  apologist  of  belief 
and  believers.  In  my  view  there  is  no  merit  either  in 
mere  belief  or  mere  doubt :  there  is  merit  only  in  be- 
lieving and  doubting  according  to  truth.  Excess  of 
belief,  however,  is  as  bad  as  excess  of  doubt;  and 
there  is  excess  wherever  either  belief  or  doubt  out- 
strips reason  and  fails  to  coincide  with  truth.  To 
doubt  so  long  as  there  is  reason  for  doubt  is  as  much 
a  duty  as  to  believe  where  there  is  reason  for  belief. 
To  believe  where  there  is  insufficient  reason  for  belief 
is  as  much  a  fault  as  to  doubt  in  opposition  to  suf- 
ficient evidence.  Enthusiasm  in  the  propagation  of 
truth  is  admirable,  but  so  is  the  enthusiasm  in  search 
of  truth  which  will  accept  no  substitute  for  truth,  no 

32 


CHRISTIAN   FAITH  AND   DOUBT 

unreasoned  or  unreasonable  belief.  The  former  en- 
thusiasm without  the  latter  is  half-vice  as  well  as 
half-virtue ;  and  it  is  only  by  chance  that  it  is  not  en- 
thusiasm in  the  propagation  of  falsehood,  which  may 
be  so  far  an  object  of  admiration  but  must  be  equally 
an  object  of  alarm. 

Duty  in  relation  to  truth  is  not,  as  some  seem  to 
think, 

"  The  stern  and  prompt  suppressing, 
As  an  obvious  deadly  sin, 
All  the  questing  and  the  guessing 
Of  the  soul's  own  soul  within  ;  " 

but  a  sense  of  responsibility  faithfully  acted  on  alike 
in  reference  to  doubt  and  belief.  It  requires  us  not 
to  fear  doubt  any  more  than  belief,  and  to  shrink 
from  no  inquiry  which  even  our  deepest  and  boldest 
doubts  suggest.  The  more  fundamental  and  far- 
reaching  are  our  doubts,  the  more  necessary  and  in- 
cumbent it  is  that  we  should  not  rest  until  we  find  sat- 
isfaction in  regard  to  them.  Loyalty  to  reason  and 
conscience  obviously  requires  this. 

And  so  does  loyalty  to  Christianity.  For  Christi- 
anity presents  itself  with  the  claim  to  be  "  the  truth  " 
guaranteed  by  appropriate  and  adequate  evidence. 
Only  he  who  is  "  in  the  truth  "can  be  ""  in  Christ," 
and  whoever  is  "  in  the  truth  "  is,  to  the  extent  in 
which  he  is  so,  "  in  Christ."  The  faith  which  Chris- 
tianity requires  is  one  which  does  not  evade  doubt, 
but  which  deals  with  it  and  conquers  it,  and  so  proves, 
purifies,  and  strengthens  itself.     To  evade  doubt  is 

33 


THE  NATURE   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

neither  the  way  to  nor  the  sign  of  a  vigorous  faith. 
Doubt  cannot  be  escaj^ed  by  evasion  or  by  refusal  to 
inquire  whether  it  is  just  or  not.  The  man  who  seeks 
thus  to  escape  doubt  is  already  firmly  in  its  grasp. 
He  who  is  afraid  to  try  his  faith,  to  follow  his  doubt 
as  far  as  reason  will  allow  him  to  go,  already  dis- 
trusts his  faith  more  than  he  who  is  prepared  to  test 
it;  already  doubts  more  than  he  who  is  willing  to 
know  fully  what  is  the  real  worth  of  his  doubt ;  and 
certainly  shows  less  confidence  in  the  truth  of  Christi- 
anity than  a  Christian  should.  A  man  who  has  no 
doubt  of  the  firmness  of  the  foundation  on  which  his 
faith  rests  will  not  fear  to  have  it  examined. 

"  He  that  would  doubt, 
If  he  could, 
Alone  cannot  doubt. 
If  he  would." 

Agnosticism,  it  must  be  further  observed,  may  not 
only  help  us  to  appreciate  aright  the  function  of 
doubt,  but  also  aid  us  to  realise  aright  the  limitations 
of  our  knowledge.  We  are  very  apt  to  imagine  it 
much  more  comprehensive,  exact,  and  certain  than 
it  is.  Hence  the  agnostic  does  good  service  by  show- 
ing men  that  they  are  intellectually  poorer  and  blind- 
er than  most  of  them  suppose. 

It  has  ever  been  his  policy  and  practice  to  employ 
the  term  knowledge  in  an  ideal  sense,  to  argue  that 
what  currently  passes  as  knowledge  is  not  knowledge 
so  understood,  and  to  infer  that  what  we  deem  knowl- 
edge is  merely  a  persuasion  of  knowledge.     The  pro- 

34 


MAN'S   KNOWLEDGE  IMPERFECT 

cedure  is  sophistical.  And  yet  it  has  been  very  ef- 
fective, owing  chiefly  to  its  being  so  true  that  human 
knowledge  falls  far  short  of  the  ideal  of  knowledge, 
and  is,  in  fact,  in  all  respects  very  imperfect.  Can- 
didly to  acknowledge,  however,  the  truth  involved  in 
the  argument  will  be  the  best  preservative  against 
what  is  fallacious  in  it.  Knowledge  does  not  cease  to 
he  knowledge  or  become  faith  by  being  imperfect. 
The  agnostic  has  formed  his  notion  of  knowledge 
without  reference  to  the  facts,  and  must  revise  it  un- 
til it  includes  and  conforms  to  them.  He  has  as- 
sumed the  truth  of  a  dogma  as  to  the  nature  of  knowl- 
edge from  which  to  reason  to  the  denial  of  the  exist- 
ence of  knowledge  wherever  it  has  the  imperfections 
which  are  inseparable  from  the  limitations  of  human 
intelligence.  Grant  the  imj^erfections,  and  it  must 
be  seen  that  what  the  agnostic  argument  really  effects 
is  merely  the  destruction  of  the  dogma  on  which  the 
agnostic  proceeds, — the  dogma  that  imperfect  knowl- 
edge is  not  knowledge  at  all. 

The  ideal  of  knowledge  is  the  absolute  knowledge 
which  belongs  to  God  only :  His  perfect  knowledge  of 
Himself,  of  all  creatures,  and  of  all  possibilities ;  a 
knowledge  wholly  original  and  wholly  intuitive,  indi- 
visible and  immutable ;  an  all-inclusive  knowledge 
within  or  beyond  which  there  is  no  darkness  at  all. 
Far  other  is  the  knowledge  of  man :  a  knowledge  small 
in  amount  and  poor  in  quality ;  a  knowledge  relative, 
superficial,  and  fragmentary ;  a  knowledge  largely  de- 
based with  the  alloy  of  illusion  and  error ;  a  knowl- 
edge which  can  only  be  slowly  and  painfully  acquired, 

35 


THE  NATUKE   OF  AGN^OSTICISM 

and  which  never  leads  to  undisturbed  rest  or  full  sat- 
isfaction. The  range  of  man's  intellect  is  so  narrow 
and  the  universe  of  existence  is  so  vast  and  complex, 
that  research  always  ends  not  with  clear  and  complete 
solutions  but  with  new  and  harder  problems.  The 
more  man  knows  the  more  conscious  he  becomes  of  his 
ignorance.  "  The  known,"  says  Darwin,  "  is  finite ; 
the  unknown  is  infinite ;  intellectually  we  stand  on  an 
islet  in  the  midst  of  an  illimitable  ocean  of  inexplica- 
bility."  "  With  every  increase  of  diameter  in  the 
sphere  of  light,"  writes  Chalmers,  "  there  is  an  in- 
crease of  surface  in  the  circumambient  darkness ;  with 
every  stej)  of  advance  on  the  path  of  knowledge,  the 
onward  obscurity  retires  a  little,  no  doubt,  but  at  the 
place  where  it  begins  is  as  deeply  shrouded  and  pre- 
sents a  greater  number  of  profound  and  unfathoma- 
ble recesses  than  before." 

Man  knows  nothing  absolutely,  comprehends  noth- 
ing completely.  He  would  require  to  be  infinite  so 
to  know  or  comprehend  "  a  flower  in  the  crannied 
wall,"  an  insect  sporting  in  the  sunbeam,  or,  in  a 
word,  even  the  very  least  of  finite  things.  How  fool- 
ish, then,  must  it  be  for  him  to  fancy  that  he  can  so 
know  or  comprehend  the  Self-existent  and  Almighty 
one,  the  first  and  the  last,  the  beginning  and  the  end 
of  all  that  is !  God  is  unknowable  in  the  absoluteness 
of  His  being,  incomprehensible  in  the  infinity  of  His 
perfections.  And  most  necessary  is  it  that  this 
should  be  habitually  borne  in  mind  by  those  who 
maintain  that  they  truly  know  that  God  is  and  in 
some  respects  surely  apprehend  what   He   is;   for 

36 


LESSON  IN   AGNOSTICISM 

through  forgetfiihiess  of  it  much  presumptuous  spec- 
ulation as  to  the  Divine  Nature  has  been  indulged  in, 
much  foolish  gnosticism  propounded,  even  in  the  pres- 
ent day ;  and  from  the  same  cause  much  of  our  theol- 
ogy is  still  painfully  anthropomorphic,  representing 
God  as  so  human  in  passions  and  feelings,  so  like  to 
ourselves,  that  His  necessary  transcendence  to  us,  and 
to  all  that  is  finite,  is  ignored.  Theological  dogmatism 
and  the  religious  conceptions  of  the  ordinary  man  are 
to  a  large  extent  deplorably  lacking  in  humility  and 
reverence.  Hence  agnosticism,  even  in  exaggerating 
our  ignorance  of  the  Divine,  carries  within  it  a  lesson 
for  us  and  has  a  spiritual  purpose  to  serve  in  the 
world.  Nowhere  is  it  so  true  as  in  theology  that 
"  when  a  man  has  got  to  the  end,  he  is  just  beginning ; 
and  when  he  ceases,  he  is  still  full  of  questions." 


37 


CHAPTER  II 
ERRONEOUS  VIEWS  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

In  the  previous  chapter  I  have  endeavoured  to  de- 
termine w^hat  signification  ought  to  be  assigned  to  the 
term  agnosticism,  and  to  indicate  what  agnosticism 
itself  is.  If,  however,  the  conclusions  at  which  I  ar- 
rived were  correct,  many  representations  of  agnosti- 
cism in  circulation  must  be  erroneous.  It  seems  de- 
sirable briefly  to  show  wherein  the  more  plausible  or 
widely  accepted  of  those  representations  are  at  fault. 
In  exposing  false  views  of  the  nature  of  agnosticism 
we  necessarily  do  something  to  vindicate  and  confirm, 
and  to  render  more  clear  and  definite,  the  true  view. 

I.  NOT  EQUIVALENT  TO  TRUTH SEARCH  OR  HONESTY 

IN  INVESTIGATION.       J.  OWEN  AND  HUXLEY. 

1.  Agnosticism  may  be  understood,  and  has  been 
understood,  to  mean  simply  free  thought,  thorougli 
and  honest  inquiry.  Scepticism  has  been  thus  under- 
stood ;  and  scepticism  in  its  philosophical  acceptation 
is  just  another  and  older  name  for  what  has  of  late 
come  to  be  called  agnosticism.  It  is  in  this  wide  and 
vague  sense  of  "  truth-search "  that  the  late  Rev. 
John  Owen  employs  the  term  "  scepticism  "  in  his 
very  learned  and  valuable  work  entitled  Evenings 

38 


JOHN  OWEN   ON  SCEPTICISM 

with  the  Skeptics  (4  vols.).  He  divides  thinking 
mankind  into  two  great  classes,  dogmatists  and  scep- 
tics, denoting  respectively  those  who  feel  certain  that 
they  have  found  truth  and  those  who  seek  truth.  All 
whom  he  regards  as  inquirers,  cautious  and  close  ex- 
aminers, persevering  searchers  after  truth,  he  desig- 
nates sceptics.  He  thus  identifies  scepticism  in 
its  philosophical  signification  with  scepticism  in  its 
etymological  sense :  the  scepticism  which  is  "  confined 
to  no  period,  race,  religious  or  secular  belief,"  and 
which  is  equivalent  to  "  free  thought,"  "  inquiring 
doubt,"  "  the  exercise  of  the  questioning  and  suspen- 
sive faculty,"  "  the  instinct  that  spontaneously  dis- 
trusts both  finality  and  infallibility  as  necessary  at- 
tributes of  truth,"  "  the  natural  protest  of  the  human 
mind  against  the  tyranny  of  human  dogma — against 
the  combined  despotism  and  narrowness  of  every 
scheme  of  human  omniscience  and  self-arrogated  au- 
thority," "  the  Protestantism  of  theology  and  philos- 
ophy," "  the  attitude  to  every  system  of  belief,  not  of 
indiscriminate  affirmation  or  denial,  but  of  inquiry, 
careful,  cautious,  and  continuous — the  determina- 
tion, according  to  the  Apostolic  precept,  to  prove  all 
things,  and  to  hold  fast  only  that  which  is  good."_     -'  m^-'^^h'^'^'^-^-*  0(^j,r^^A 

If  scepticism  be  entitled  to  be  thus  described  so  is 
agnosticism.  And  certainly  no  professed  sceptic  or 
agnostic  is  likely  to  complain  of  such  an  account  of 
his  own  character.  So  much  generosity,  indeed,  is 
displayed  towards  him  that  it  is  difficult  to  see  what 
room  there  is  left  for  justice  to  any  one  else.  The 
Greek  sceptics  in  designating  themselves   ol  a-KeirriKol 

39 


ERRONEOUS  VIEWS   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

and  their  opponents  ol  BoyfiartKoi,  no  doubt  wished  to 
suggest  that  they  alone  sought  truth  aright,  and  that 
all  other  philosophers  only  taught  doctrines  to  which 
they  had  assented  without  sufficient  inquiry.  But 
they  had  clearly  no  right  to  suggest  anything  of  the 
sort — no  right  to  use  the  terms  mentioned  as  "  ques- 
tion-begging appellatives."  The  sceptic  of  the  pres- 
ent day  who  calls  himself  an  agnostic  no  doubt  de- 
sires it  to  be  implied  that  all  thinkers  who  differ  from 
him  as  to  the  limits  of  human  knowledge  are  gnostics, 
believing  that  they  know  what  they  do  not  and  cannot 
know;  but  he  cannot  reasonably  expect  that  non-ag- 
nostics will  either  take  him  at  his  own  estimate  or 
accept  his  estimate  of  themselves. 

The  view  which  Mr.  Owen  gives  of  scepticism  is 
obviously  defective.  The  history  of  scepticism  un- 
derstood so  as  to  be  in  accordance  with  it  would  be 
the  whole  history  of  reason  when  true  to  itself,  the 
entire  history  of  human  enlightenment — a  history 
wider  than,  but  inclusive  of  the  history  of  all  science 
and  of  all  philosophy.  It  would  be  a  history  in  which 
the  history  of  the  scepticism  of  the  philosophical 
schools  would  be  entitled  only  to  a  comparatively 
small  space;  one  for  which  even  the  wide  bounds 
assigned  to  it  by  Mr.  Owen  would  be  absurdly 
narrow. 

Philosophical  scepticism  is  a  species  of.  thought 
quite  distinct  from,  although,  of  course,  not  unrelated 
to,  ordinary  doubt  and  inquiry,  suspense  of  judgment, 
and  quest  of  truth  in  general.  It  can  liave  no  exist- 
ence except  where  speculation  and  philosophy  exist. 

40 


DOGMATISM  AND   SCEPTICISM 

To  conceive  of  it  as  instinct  or  spontaneity,  or  the 
simple  natural  exercise  of  any  faculty,  is  wholly 
to  misunderstand  its  nature.  It  is  an  essentially  ex- 
ceptional and  limited,  reflective  and  theoretical,  pro- 
cedure or  state  of  mind. 

The  division  of  philosophers  on  which  the  view  of 
philosophical  scepticism  in  question  rests — the  divis- 
ion into  dogmatists  and  sceptics — is  plainly  not  a  log- 
ical division  at  all.  There  is  no  philosophy  where 
there  is  no  search  for  truth.  Whoever  does  not  seek 
truth  and  feel  that  what  he  knows  is  but  a  little  in 
comparison  with  what  he  does  not  know,  has  no  claim 
to  be  considered  a  philosopher.  It  does  not  follow 
that  because  a  man  may  believe  certain  great  truths 
to  be  well  established,  that  he  has  renounced  research 
and  must  be  excluded  from  the  class  of  truth-seekers. 
The  immense  majority  of  thinkers  must  in  justice  be 
regarded  as  both  dogmatic  and  sceptic,  in  the  merely 
general  meanings  of  the  terms.  One  may  tend  more 
to  belief  and  another  more  to  doubt ;  one  may  be  of  a 
more  receptive  and  constructive,  and  another  of  a 
more  critical  and  distrustful  cast  of  intellect;  but 
the  difference  is  only  of  degree,  and  the  extreme 
types  of  either  habits  of  mind  are  comparatively 
few. 

It  is  not  at  all  the  mere  seeking  of  truth  which 
characterises  the  philosophical  sceptic  or  agnostic; 
it  is  the  want  of  belief  that  seeking  can  be  successful. 
This  want  of  belief  may,  of  course,  often  save  him 
from  ceasing  from  search  under  the  notion  that  he 
has  found  truth  when  he  really  has  not ;  but  that  it  is 

41 


EIUIONEOUS  VIEWS   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

any  real  stimulus  to  seek  for  truth  may  very  reasona- 
bly be  questioned.  Three  elements  must  combine  in 
order  to  constitute  the  full  motive  to  search  for  truth 
— namely,  a  consciousness  of  imperfectly  apprehend- 
ing truth,  a  desire  to  apprehend  it  springing  from  the 
love  of  it,  and  a  conviction  that  if  we  exert  ourselves 
we  may  attain  to  a  more  perfect  apprehension  of  it. 
In  the  agnostic  or  philosophical  sceptic  there  is  the 
first  of  these  elements,  and  there  may  be  also,  al- 
though not  perhaps  very  consistently,  the  second,  but 
the  third  is  absent ;  and  hence  he  has  not  more  but  less 
motive  to  seek  for  truth  zealously  than  many  other 
men. 

2.  Professor  Huxley  has  given  an  account  of  ag- 
nosticism almost  identical  with  Mr.  Owen's  of  scepti- 
cism. The  following  excerpt  from  his  writings  may 
sufiice  as  proof :  "  Agnosticism,  in  fact,  is  not  a 
creed,  but  a  method,  the  essence  of  which  lies  in  the 
rigorous  application  of  a  single  principle.  That 
principle  is  of  great  antiquity ;  it  is  as  old  as  Socrates ; 
as  old  as  the  writer  who  said,  '  Try  all  things,  hold 
fast  by  that  which  is  good  '  ;  it  is  the  foundation  of 
the  Reformation,  which  simply  illustrated  the  a?iom 
that  every  man  should  be  able  to  give  a  reason  for  the 
faith  that  is  in  him ;  it  is  the  great  principle  of  Des- 
cartes; it  is  the  fundamental  axiom  of  modern  sci- 
ence. Positively  the  principle  may  be  expressed : 
In  matters  of  the  intellect,  follow  your  reason  as 
far  as  it  will  take  you,  without  regard  to  any  other 
consideration.  And  negatively :  In  "matters  of  the 
intellect,  do  not  pretend  that  conclusions  are  certain 

42 


HUXLEY'S  DESCRIPTION   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

which  are  not  demonstrated  or  demonstrable.  That 
I  take  to  be  the  agnostic  faith,  which  if  a  man 
keep  whole  and  undefiled,  he  shall  not  be  ashamed  to 
look  the  nniverse  in  the  face,  whatever  the  future 
may  have  in  store  for  him."  ^ 

What  we  have  here  described  to  us  as  "  the  agnos- 
tic faith  "  is  simply  honesty  in  investigation.  The 
excellence  of  that  quality  of  mind  is,  of  course,  un- 
questionable ;  and  the  obligatoriness  of  exercising  it 
ought  to  be  self-evident  whatever  be  the  subject  of 
investigation.  It  may  be  more  difficult  to  practise  it 
— more  difficult  to  apply  what  Professor  Huxley  calls 
its  "  principle  " — in  philosophy  and  theology  than  in 
physical  science,  but  it  is  none  the  less  binding.  Is 
it  reasonable,  however,  to  represent  agnosticism  as 
synonymous  with  intellectual  honesty  ?  Is  it  equi- 
table to  attribute  to  it,  or  to  any  other  ism,  that  virtue 
as  exclusively  its  own,  its  differential  quality  ?  The 
mere  fact  that  inquirers  of  all  kinds  lay  claim  to  in- 
tellectual honesty  seems  to  me  sufficient  to  warrant 
our  answering  these  questions  in  the  negative. 

That  the  account  which  he  gives  of  agnosticism  is 
far  too  general  and  vague  Huxley  himself  immedi- 
ately, although  unconsciously,  proceeds  to  help  us  to 
realise.  He  writes :  "  The  results  of  the  working 
out  of  the  agnostic  principle  will  vary  according  to 
individual  knowledge  and  capacity,  and  according  to 
the  general  condition  of  science.  That  which  is  un- 
proven  to-day  may  be  proven  by  the  help  of  new  dis- 
coveries to-morrow.  The  only  negative  fixed  points 
'  Collected  Essays,  vol.  v.  pp.  245,  246. 

43 


ERRONEOUS  VIEWS  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

will  be  those  negations  which  flow  from  the  demon- 
strable limitation  of  our  faculties.  And  the  only  ob- 
ligation accepted  is  to  have  the  mind  always  open  to 
conviction.  Agnostics  who  never  fail  in  carrying  out 
these  principles  are,  I  am  afraid,  as  rare  as  other  peo- 
ple of  whom  the  same  consistency  can  be  truthfully 
predicated.  But  if  you  were  to  meet  with  such  a 
phosnix  and  to  tell  him  that  you  had  discovered  that 
two  and  two  make  five,  he  would  patiently  ask  you  to 
state  your  reasons  for  that  conviction,  and  express  his 
readiness  to  agree  with  you  if  he  found  them  satisfac- 
tory. The  apostolic  injunction  to  '  suffer  fools  glad- 
ly '  should  be  the  rule  of  life  of  a  true  agnostic.  I 
am  deeply  conscious  how  far  I  myself  fall  short  of 
this  ideal,  but  it  is  my  personal  conception  of  what 
agnostics  ought  to  be."  ^ 

Here  too  the  working  out  of  the  agnostic  principle 
means  merely  the  conscientious  exercise  of  intel- 
ligence in  the  pursuit  of  truth.  But  as  that  may  lead 
to  gnosticism  no  less  than  to  agnosticism,  agnostic  is 
not  a  more  appropriate  term  for  it  than  gnostic.  The 
agnostic,  it  may  be  further  remarked,  is  just  as  likely 
as  the  gnostic  to  fancy  that  he  has  discovered  two 
and  two  to  make  five.  It  may  even  be  thought  that 
the  agnostic  is  specially  liable  to  such  folly.  A  much 
more  thorough  agnostic  than  Professor  Huxley,  the 
renowned  Carneades,  refused  to  admit  that  two  quan- 
tities equal  to  another  quantity  must  be  equal  to  each 
other.  The  agnosticism  of  Lamennais  led  him  to 
deny  the  certainty  of  mathematical  axioms.  John 
*  Collected  Essays,  vol.  v.  pp.  246,  247. 
44 


HUXLEY'S   OWN   CREED 

S.  Mill  was  in  a  very  agnostic  mood  when  he  affirmed 
the  possibility  of  a  world  in  which  propositions  like 
two  and  two  make  five  may  hold  good. 

The  working  out  of  the  so-called  agnostic  principle 
may  thus,  according  to  the  view  under  consideration, 
lead  to  all  sorts  of  conclusions,  gnostic  included,  and 
that  even  in  the  hands  of  an  agnostic.  The  imme- 
diate occasion  of  Mr.  Huxley's  declaration  that  "  ag- 
nostics have  no  creed,  and,  by  the  nature  of  the  case, 
cannot  have  any,"  was  that  Mr.  Laing,  a  man  of  much 
and  varied  ability  and  of  pronounced  agnostic  opin- 
ions, had  drawn  up,  at  the  request  of  Mr.  Gladstone, 
a  summary  in  eight  articles  of  what  he  deemed  the 
agnostic  creed.  Of  that  summary  Mr.  Huxley  has 
said,  "  When  I  consider  his  "  (Mr.  Laing's)  "  creed 
and  compare  it  with  the  Athanasian,  I  think  I  have 
on  the  whole  a  clearer  conception  of  the  latter."  ^ 
But  if  so,  may  not  the  Athanasian  creed  itself,  how- 
ever dogmatic  and  gnostic  its  articles  may  be  held  to 
be,  have  been  the  working  out  of  what  is  termed  the 
agnostic  principle  ? 

Besides,  Professor  Huxley's  own  agnosticism  was 
certainly  not  exclusive  of  creed  or  dogma.  He  in- 
vented the  term  agnostic  to  distinguish  himself  from 
the  adherents  of  a  variety  of  isms,  philosophical  and 
theological,  expressly  because,  in  his  words,  "  they 
were  quite  sure  that  they  had  a  certain  '  gnosis ' — 
had,  more  or  less  successfully,  solved  the  problem  of 
existence ;  while  I  was  quite  sure  I  had  not,  and  had 
a  pretty  strong  conviction  that  the  problem  was  insol- 
>  Collected  Essays,  toI.  v.  p.  247. 

4$ 


ERRONEOUS  VIEWS  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

uble."  Now,  any  man  quite  sure  of  all  that  must, 
whatever  he  may  imagine  to  the  contrary,  not  only 
have  a  creed,  but  one  of  considerable  extent.  Its  neg- 
ative dogmas,  I  venture  to  think,  would  of  themselves 
require  more  than  eight  articles  for  their  separate 
and  explicit  formulation.  But  Professor  Huxley's 
creed  was  far  from  exclusively  negative.  His  agnos- 
ticism was  confined  to  beliefs  not  drawn  from  and 
confirmed  by  sense-perceptions,  but  was  not  hostile  to 
such  as  were.  It  consequently  coexisted  with  a  creed 
comprehensive  of  many  positive  doctrines. 

To  say  of  agnosticism  that  it  is  not  a  creed  but 
a  method  is,  in  fact,  not  one  whit  truer  than  it  would 
be  to  say  so  of  gnosticism.  Gnosticism  has  had  no 
general  creed,  but  it  has  produced  a  crowd  of  creeds. 
So  has  it  been  with  agnosticism.  It  has  no  common 
or  general  creed ;  but  it  has  as  many  creeds  as  it  has 
forms,  and  the  number  of  its  forms  relatively  to  the 
number  of  its  adherents  is  very  great.  Creed  cannot 
be  got  rid  of  by  any  intelligent  being.  Certainly  it 
has  not  been  got  rid  of  by  any  one  who  is  "  quite 
sure  "  as  to  what  either  can  or  cannot  be  known. 


II.  NOT  EQUIVALENT  TO  KNOW-NOTHINGISM.  RELA- 
TION OF  AGNOSTICISM  TO  THE  THEORY  OF  NES- 
CIENCE 

1.  The  agnostic  is  sometimes  described  as  one  who 
does  not  Tcnow,  and  agnosticism  as  know-nothing  ism, 
"  a  know-nothing  creed."  This  account  of  the  agnos- 
tic and  agnosticism  is  not  unfrequently  to  be  met 

46 


AGNOSTICISM  AND   NESCIENCE 

with  in  a  certain  kind  of  religions  literature.  It  is 
nevertheless  a  misrepresentation  and  caricature. 

Not  to  know  is  merely  to  be  ignorant,  and  to  know 
nothing  is  merely  to  be  completely  ignorant.     But 
merely  to  be  ignorant  is  not  to  be  an  agnostic ;  igno- 
rance, even  if  it  were  complete,  would  not  be  affnosti-    „ 
cism.      ihe  new-born  child  is  ignorant,  but  it  is  not  ' 

an  agnostic.  The  agnostic  is  not  only  one  who  does 
not  know,  but  one  who  has  convinced  himself  that  the 
human  mind  lacks  the  powers  necessary  to  enable  it 
to  know.  Agnosticism  is  a  learned  ignorance  based 
on  self-knowledge  and  philosophical  reflection. 

Besides,  there  are  very  few  agnostics  who  profess 
to  know  nothing,  and  to  be  unable  to  know  anything, 
unless  it  be  in  a  special  sense  of  the  word  "  know," 
which  so  alters  the  meaning  of  the  statement  as  to 
make  it  harmless  Or  even  true.  There  is  a  sense  in 
which  no  man  does  know  anything.  lie  knows  only  as 
a  man  may  know;  he  does  not  know  as  God  knows; 
he  does  not  know  completely,  or  with  a  full  and  infal- 
lible knowledge,  anything  in  its  whole  nature  and  en- 
tire relationships.  "  If  any  man  think,"  says  St. 
Paul,  "  that  he  knoweth  anything,  he  knoweth  noth- 
ing yet  as  he  ought  to  know  "  (1  Cor.  viii.  2).  There 
we  have  St.  Paul  declaring  that  any  true  knowledge 
we  can  have — the  knowledge  that  we  all  ought  to 
have — is  a  consciousness  of  knowing  nothing.  But 
he  did  not  thereby  proclaim  himself  an  agnostic,  anx- 
ious to  convert  all  men  to  agnosticism.  He  only  ex- 
pressed his  sense  of  the  imperfection  of  human  knowl- 
edge, and  his  desire  that  all  men  humbly  so  felt  its 

47 


EERONEOUS  VIEWS  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

imperfection  as  not  to  be  unduly  proud  of  it,  which 
they  are  very  apt  to  be,  and  indeed  generally  the  more 
apt  the  more  imperfect  it  is.  Accordingly  his  remark- 
able and  profound  declaration  was  immediately  pre- 
ceded by  the  words — "  We  know  that  we  all  have 
knowledge.  Knowledge  puffeth  up,  but  love  edi- 
fieth." 

Agnosticism  and  the  profession  of  complete  inabil- 
ity to  know  are,  then,  not  to  be  identified.  But 
neither  are  they  to  be  entirely  separated.  The  com- 
pletest  agnosticism  must  be  that  which  allows  to  the 
mind  least  capacity  for  knowledge.  An  agnosticism 
which  succeeded  in  showing  that  man  is  wholly  des- 
titute of  power  to  know  would  be  perfect  as  agnosti- 
cism. But  such  perfection  agnosticism  has  never  at- 
tained, nor  can  reasonably  hope  ever  to  attain.  A 
demonstrated  ignorance  is  at  least  not  ignorance  so 
far  as  the  demonstration  is  concerned.  As  all  prov- 
ing involves  knowing,  the  proving  that  there  is  no 
knowing  is  a  sort  of  proving  which  is  inherently  self- 
contradictory.  The  necessity  of  self-justification  is 
Ifor  agnosticism  a  necessity  of  self-limitation. 

2.  It  is  desirable  to  have  a  clear  view  of  the  rela- 
tion of  agnosticism  (scepticism)  to  the  doctrine  of 
nescience.  The  relation  is  not  unfrequently  one  of 
identity  with  what  is  called  the  doctrine  of  nescience, 
the  designation  often  meaning  merely  the  agnostic  or 
sceptical  doctrine  of  nescience, — such  a  doctrine  as 
undertakes  to  show  that  what  all  except  agnostics 
(sceptics)  suppose  to  be  knowledge  (science)  is  really 
ignorance  (nescience), — unsupported  and  unverified 

48 


DOCTRINES   OF  NESCIENCE 

belief,  a  blind  faith  produced  by  non-rational  causes. 
The  doctrine  of  nescience  of  Aenesidemus  and  Sextus 
Empiricus,  of  Ilirnhaim  and  Iluet,  of  Hume  and 
Maimon,  for  example,  is  often  called  a  doctrine  of 
universal  nescience,  and  it  is  so,  but  only  in  the  sense 
indicated, — one  in  which  it  is  plainly  identical  with 
universal  scepticism,  absolute  agnosticism.  So  the 
doctrine  of  nescience  of  Auguste  Comte  and  Thomas 
Huxley,  which  while  professing  to  prove  man's  neces- 
sary ignorance  of  all  that  lies  beyond  the  sphere  of 
sense-perception  admits  a  possible  knowledge  of  all 
that  lies  within  it,  is  at  once  a  doctrine  of  partial  nes- 
cience and  a  form  of  partial  agnosticism  or  scepti- 
cism, for  the  simple  reason  that  it  is  an  agnostic  or 
sceptical  doctrine  of  nescience. 

But  a  doctrine  of  nescience  has  no  exclusive  or 
special  connection  with  agnosticism  or  scepticism. 
The  most  extreme  gnosticism,  the  most  uncompromis- 
ing dogmatism,  implies  a  doctrine  of  nescience  no  less 
than  does  the  most  thorough  agnosticism,  the  most 
resolute  scepticism.  A  doctrine  of  nescience  may,  in 
a  word,  be  either  gnostic  or  agnostic,  or  neither  gnos- 
tic nor  agnostic.  And,  it  should  be  observed,  that  in 
endeavouring  to  reach  a  true  doctrine  of  nescience 
we  should  prosecute  our  investigations  unbiassed  by 
a  desire  that  it  should  be  either  the  one  or  the  other, 
or  the  one  more  than  the  other.  In  itself  a  doctrine 
of  nescience  is  simply  a  reasoned  answer  to  the  ques- 
tion. What  are  the  limits  beyond  which,  and  the  con- 
ditions failing  to  comply  with  which,  the  mind  of 
man  necessarily  wanders  in  ignorance  and  error  ?     In 

49 


ERRONEOUS   VIEWS  OP  AGNOSTICISM 

other  words,  it  is  an  essential  part  or  necessary  com- 
plement of  the  theory  of  knowledge,  or,  as  it  is  com- 
monly called,  epistemology.  Thus  understood,  ag- 
nosiology  or  agnoiology  is  a  sufficiently  appropriate 
designation  for  a  doctrine  of  nescience,  but  agnosti- 
cism is  a  very  misleading  one. 

Agnosticism  is  only  a  special  theory  of  nescience, 
the  sceptical  theory.  If,  in  this  special  sense,  it  is  a 
doctrine  of  universal  nescience,  it  is  complete  agnos- 
ticism, but  if  a  doctrine  of  nescience  only  within  a 
particular  sphere  of  belief  or  inquiry,  it  is  partial 
agnosticism.  It  would  be  decidedly  advantageous, 
however,  if  by  the  doctrine  of  nescience  were  always 
meant  not  agnosticism  but  agnoiology ; — not  a  delib- 
erate endeavour  to  prove  knowledge  in  whole  or  in 
part  unattainable,  but  an  impartial  inquiry  as  to 
when  and  where  it  ceases  to  be  attainable. 


III.   NOT  NECESSARILY  ATHEISM,  ALTHOUGH  ATHEISM 
IS  OFTEN  AGNOSTICISM.       DR.  BITHELL^S  POSITION 

Agnosticism  is  not  to  be  identified  with  a  know- 
nothing  position  in  religion  or  as  to  the  object  of 
religious  faith  and  worship.  This  is  often  done  in 
popular  religious  discourse  and  literature,  but  it  is  an 
error  in  defence  of  which  little  can  be  relevantly  said. 

Agnosticism  is  properly  a  theory  about  knowledge, 
not jibout  religion.  It  may  be  about  religion,  for  it 
may  doubt  or  deny  that  we  can  know  spiritual  truth ; 
it  may  even  be  exclusively  alx)ut  religion,  for  it  may 
doubt  or  deny  the  attainability  of  no  other  kind  of 

50 


AGNOSTICISM  NOT  ATHEISM 

truth  than  spiritual  truth.  Recent  agnosticism  has 
been  in  a  large  measure  agnosticism  only  as  to  the 
truth  implied  in  religion  and  indispensable  to  its 
vindication.  But  religion  may  be  held  to  be  the  one 
thing  which  may  be  best  knoyvn,  or  even  the  only  thing 
which  can  be  truly  known ;  all  else,  it  may  be 
contended,  is  illusion  and  error.  In  India  philo- 
sophic thought  has  been  agnostic  in  hardly  any  other 
sense  than  this.  The  Greek  sceptics  were  not  more 
sceptical  as  to  religious  than  as  to  empirical  or  ethi- 
cal truth :  their  agnosticism  was  universal,  or  nearly 
so, — not  specially  anti-religious.  It  has  often  been 
attempted  to  show  that  nature  and  reason  are  untrust- 
worthy, with  a  view  to  induce  men  to  accept  revela- 
tion with  unquestioning  faith.  This  procedure  is 
none  the  less  agnostic  because  undertaken  in  support 
of  religious  authority. 

It  follows,  even  from  what  has  just  been  said,  that 
agnosticism  is  not  atheism.  Agnosticism  is  some- 
times spoken  of  as  only  another  name  for  atheism, 
or  as  a  kind  of  atheism.  This  should  never  be  done. 
Agnosticism  may  be  combined  with  atheism  as  it  may 
with  Christianity,  but  it  is  no  more  atheism,  or  a  kind 
of  atheism,  than  it  is  Christianity,  or  a  kind  of  Chris- 
tianity. 

A  theist  and  a  Christian  may  be  an  agnostic ;  an 
atheist  may  not  be  an  agnostic.  A  man  who  believes 
that  God  can  be  known,  but  not  that  an  external 
world  can  be  known,  is  as  much  an  agnostic  as  a  man 
who  believes  that  an  external  world  can  be  known, 
but  not  that  God  can  be  known.     An  atheist  may  deny 

61 


ERRONEOUS  VIEWS  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

that  there  is  a  God,  and  in  this  case  his  atheism  is  dog- 
matic, not  agnostic ;  or  he  may  refuse  to  acknowledge 
that  there  is  a  God  simply  on  the  ground  that  he  per- 
ceives no  evidence  for  His  existence,  and  finds  the 
arguments  which  have  been  advanced  in  proof  of  it 
invalid:  and  in  this  case  his  atheism  is  critical,  not  ag- 
nostic. It  consequently  always  shows  want  of  clear- 
ness of  mind,  and  sometimes,  it  is  to  be  feared,  it 
shows  uncharitableness  of  heart,  to  treat  agnosticism 
as  equivalent  to  atheism. 

The  atheist  may  however  be,  and  not  unfrequently 
is,  an  agnostic.  There  is  an  agnostic  atheism  or 
atheistic  agnosticism,  and  the  combination  of  atheism 
with  agnosticism  which  may  be  so  named  is  not  an 
uncommon  one.  While,  therefore,  it  is  unwarranta- 
ble and  unjust  to  identify  agnosticism  and  atheism, 
the  accuracy  of  a  passage  like  the  following,  taken 
from  an  exceptionally  interesting  agnostic  treatise, 
cannot  be  admitted  :  "  An  agnostic  is  not  an  atheist. 
Positive,  dogmatic  atheism  is  as  repugnant  to  the 
sentiments  of  the  true  agnostic  as  any  of  the  false  cer- 
titudes embodied  in  the  professions  of  religious  sects. 
He  usually  knows  quite  as  much  of  God,  immortality, 
the  soul,  as  most  other  men ;  but  he  does  not  pre- 
tend to  know  what  he  does  not  and  cannot  know, 
nor  does  he  dignify  with  the  name  of  Tcnowledge  what 
is  perhaps  at  best  a  mere  traditional  belief,  inca- 
pable of  proof,  and  unverified  by  experience.  The 
atheist  does  the  contrary  of  this.  The  man  who 
says,  '  There  is  no  God,'  makes  a  universal  declara- 
tion which  assumes  an  amount  of  knowledge,  and 

52 


ATHEISM   AND   AGNOSTICISM 

knowledge  of  such  a  kind  as  never  was  possessed  by 
any  human  mortal."  ^ 

ISTow  such  an  account  of  the  atheist  is  just  as  much 
a  misrepresentation  as  is  that  of  the  agnostic  to  which 
objection  is  taken.  The  atheist  is  not  necessarily  a 
man  who  says  "  There  is  no  God."  What  is  called 
positive  or  dogmatic  atheism,  so  far  from  being  the 
only  kind  of  atheism,  is  the  rarest  of  all  kinds.  It 
has  often  been  questioned  whether  there  is  any  such 
thing.  But  every  man  is  an  atheist  who  does  not 
believe  that  there  is  a  God,  although  his  want  of  be- 
lief may  not  be  rested  on  any  allegation  of  positive 
knowledge  that  there  is  no  God,  but  simply  on  one  of 
want  of  knowledge  that  there  is  a  God.  If  a  man 
have  failed  to  find  any  good  reason  for  believing  that 
there  is  a  God,  it  is  perfectly  natural  and  rational 
that  he  should  not  believe  that  there  is  a  God ;  and  if 
so,  he  is  an  atheist,  although  he  assume  no  superhu- 
man knowledge,  but  merely  the  ordinary  human  pow- 
er of  judging  of  evidence.  If  he  go  farther,  and, 
after  an  investigation  into  the  nature  and  reach  of 
human  knowledge,  ending  in  the  conclusion  that  the 
existence  of  God  is  incapable  of  proof,  cease  to  believe 
in  it  on  the  ground  that  he  cannot  know  it  to  be  true, 
he  is  an  agnostic  and  also  an  atheist,  an  agnostic- 
atheist — an  atheist  because  an  agnostic.  There  are 
unquestionably  many  such  atheists.  Agnosticism  is 
among  the  commonest  of  apologies  for  atheism. 
While,  then,  it  is  erroneous  to  identify  agnosticism 

»  The  Creed  of  a  Modern  Agnostic.     By  Richard  Bithell,  B.Sc, 
Ph.D.,  pp.  12,  13.     London,  1883. 

53 


ERRONEOUS   VIEWS   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

and  atheism,  it  is  equally  erroneous  so  to  separate 
them  as  if  the  one  were  exclusive  of  the  other :  that 
thej  are  frequently  combined  is  an  unquestionable 
fact. 

The  author  of  the  passage  to  which  I  am  referring 
seems  to  suppose  that  a  man  may  believe  that  there 
is  a  God,  and  at  the  same  time  believe  that  he  has  no 
knowledge  that  there  is  a  God,  and  that  his  belief 
that  there  is  a  God  is  ""  perhaps  at  best  a  mere  tradi- 
tional belief,  incapable  of  proof,  and  unverified  by  ex- 
perience." If  there  be  any  such  man,  I  grant  that 
in  virtue  of  his  belief  that  there  is  a  God  he  is  entitled 
to  be  called  a  theist  and  wronged  if  he  be  called  an 
atheist.  But  I  confess  I  seriously  doubt  his  exist- 
ence. Belief  which  is  fully  conscious  of  being  mere 
belief,  without  any  true  knowledge  of  its  object  or 
any  good  reason  for  itself,  and  without  any  ca- 
pability of  proof  or  verification,  is,  it  appears  to 
me,  self -contradictory  belief,  and  a  psychologically 
impossible  state  of  mind.  Why  I  think  so  will  be  in- 
dicated at  a  later  stage  of  this  inquiry. 

IV.    NOT    TO    BE    IDENTIFIED    WITH    POSITIVISM. 
PEOFESSOR    FRASEK 

A  very  common  misconception  as  to  agnosticism  is 
that  it  is  identical  with  positivism,  phenomenalism, 
empiricism — with  that  system  according  to  which 
knowledge  is  limited  to  what  is  sensibly  apprehended 
or  immediately  felt,  to  appearances,  to  perceptions  or 
modes  of  consciousness.  This  view  has  commended 
itself  to  many  philosophical  thinkers.     Thus,  to  give 

54 


PROFESSOR  FRASER'S  VIEW 

only  one  instance,  Professor  Fraser  has  written  as 
follows :  "  One  of  the  chief  intellectual  formations, 
in  the  interval  since  Hume,  has  been  what  is  now 
called  positive  or  agnostic  philosophy.  In  this  pan- 
phenomenalism,  knowledge  is  limited  to  physically 
produced  beliefs  in  coexistences  and  successions — ex- 
tended by  '  inferences  from  particulars  to  particu- 
lars ' — all  at  last  regarded  as  an  evolution,  through 
habit  and  association,  individual  and  inherited. 
With  regard  to  everything  beyond,  this  sort  of 
philosophy  is  professedly  antagonistic.  Agnosticism 
must  be  distinguished  from  the  universal  scepticism 
that  does  not  admit  either  of  proof  or  disproof.  The 
latter  dissolves  the  cement  of  all  belief,  even  beliefs 
in  relations  of  coexistence  or  succession  among  phe- 
nomena. The  former  only  alleges  that  outside  the 
coexisting  and  successive  phenomena  of  sense  there  is 
nothing  to  be  cemented — that  all  assertions  or  denials 
about  supposed  realities  beyond  the  range  of  natural 
science  are  illusions."  ^ 

'  Berkeley  (in  Blackwoods'  Philosopliical  Classics),  p.  226.  The 
quotation  is  from  the  first  edition.  In  "a  new  edition,  amended," 
the  corresponding  passage  runs  thus  :  "  One  of  the  chief  intel- 
lectual formations,  in  the  interval  since  Hume,  has  been  what  is 
sometimes  called  Naturalism.  In  Naturalism,  knowledge  is  sup- 
posed to  be  limited  to  physically  produced  beliefs — extended  by 
'  inference  from  particulars  to  particulars' — all  regarded  as  issue  of 
blind  evolution,  through  liabit  and  association,  individual  or  inherit- 
ed. With  regard  to  everything  beyond,  this  philosophy  is  professedly 
agnostic,"  &c.  To  that  view  my  criticism  is  not  meant  to  apply,  and 
I  am  happy  to  find  myself  in  agreement  with  the  esteemed  and  hon- 
oured author.  I  have  not  deemed  it  necessary,  however,  to  alter 
what  was  not  only  written  but  in  print  before  his  second  edition 
appeared,  as  the  whole  section  is  as  relevant  now  as  then  against 
the  very  prevalent  confusion  of  agnosticism  with  positivism. 

55 


EKRONEOUS  VIEWS   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

Now,  positivism  may,  perhaps,  be  correctly  held  to 
imply  agnosticism,  but  it  should  not  be  identified  with 
it.  In  all  that  it  affirms  positivism  is  the  contrary  of 
agnosticism,  the  limitation  and  exclusion  of  agnosti- 
cism. It  is  the  concession  that  all  phenomena  are 
knowable,  and  so  far  is  non-agnostic.  But  there 
have  been  forms  of  philosophy  directly  opposed  to 
positivism — idealistic,  ontological,  speculative  forms 
of  philosophy — which  made  no  such  concession  to 
sense  and  ordinary  experience,  but  held,  on  the  con- 
trary, that  these  were  the  special  haunts  of  uncer- 
tainty and  falsehood,  and  that  truth  was  only  to  be 
found  in  the  regions  of  pure  thought  and  absolute  be- 
ing. So  far  as  regards  sense  and  phenomena,  it  is 
plainly  such  forms  of  philosophy  which  are  agnostic, 
and  the  varieties  of  positivism  which  are  non-agnos- 
tic. 

When  positivism  denies  that  we  can  know  any- 
thing beyond  what  it  calls  experience  and  phenomena, 
the  denial  seems  clearly  to  require  for  its  vindication 
a  theory  of  knowledge,  and  one  which,  if  the  denial 
be  legitimate,  must  be  of  an  agnostic  kind.  The  pos- 
itivist  may  or  may  not,  however,  have  such  a  theory ; 
and  although  he  may  be  inconsistent  without  it,  he 
may  be  not  more  so  than  with  it.  Irrationality  is 
before  him  either  way. 

It  is  obviously  unsatisfactory  to  define  the  limits  of 
knowledge  without  any  investigation  of  the  nature  of 
knowledge.  The  positivism  which  merely  "  alleges  " 
that  the  mind  can  know  nothing  except  the  coexisting 
and  successive  phenomena  of  sense  is  not  entitled  to 

66 


AaNOSTICISM  AND   POSITIVISM 

be  called  agnosticism,  because  it  is  not  philosophy. 
It  has  an  unreasoned  belief  and  makes  an  arbitrary 
assertion  regarding  knowledge,  but  it  has  no  critical 
or  philosophical  theory  regarding  knowledge ;  and 
Avhere  there  is  no  such  theory  to  speak  of  agnosticism 
is  out  of  place. 

On  the  other  hand,  how,  consistently  with  the  gen- 
eral theory  of  positivism,  can  a  theory  of  knowledge 
be  attained  which  will  justify  agnosticism  ?  How 
from  actual  experience  alone  can  the  limits  of  possi- 
ble experience  be  determined  ?  It  would  seem  as  if, 
in  order  to  attempt,  with  any  reasonable  hopes  of  suc- 
cess, to  ascertain  the  range  of  man's  capability  of 
knowledge,  we  must  inquire  into  the  nature  of  his 
powers  of  knowledge,  and  not  merely  make  a  survey 
of  what,  in  our  opinion,  he  actually  knows.  And  yet 
it  is  very  difficult  to  see  how  positivism  can  afford  to 
acknowledge  this;  for  it  means  that  so  far  from  ex- 
perience exclusively  limiting  thought,  thought  still 
more  limits  experience — that  knowledge  itself  is  not 
to  be  studied  merely  in  the  phenomena  of  knowledge 
— that  even  to  attempt  to  cast  out  the  Beelzebub  of 
metaphysics  we  must  begin  by  invoking  his  aid. 

In  a  word,  while  the  negations  of  the  positivist  as 
to  the  spiritual  and  the  supernatural  must  appear  un- 
warranted assertions  until  based  on  some  agnostic 
theory  of  the  nature  and  conditions  of  cognition,  in 
order  to  establish  such  a  theory  the  positivist  must 
sacrifice  his  positivism.  Hence  many  positivists 
evade  the  task  of  inquiring  into  the  limits  of  human 
knowledge,  and  simply  assert  that  nothing  is  known 

57 


EEliONEOUS  VIEWS   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

beyond  phenomena,  on  the  ground  that  experience 
and  liistory  testify  that  all  attempts  to  know  more 
than  phenomena  have  hitherto  been  failures,  and  that 
it  may,  consequently,  be  held  that  all  similar  attempts 
will  equally  be  failures.  That  this  is  not  self-con- 
sistent or  logical  may  readily  be  granted ;  but  positiv- 
ism cannot  be  self -consistent  and  logical,  either  when 
superficial  and  dogmatic,  or  when  more  profound 
through  alliance  with  agnosticism. 

The  preceding  considerations  may  suffice  to  show 
that  positivism  ought  not  to  be  identified  with  agnos- 
ticism, although  it  has  an  agnostic  aspect  or  involves 
agnosticism.  It  has  to  be  added,  that  there  is  no  need 
for  this  new  name  of  agnosticism  merely  to  designate 
the  system  called  positivism,  phenomenalism,  empiri- 
cism, sensationism.  These  other  and  older  terms  are 
amply  sufficient.  None  of  them  may  be  free  from 
defects,  but  the  most  faulty  of  them  is  a  more  appro- 
priate appellation  than  agnosticism  of  the  doctrine  to 
which  they  are  applied. 

V.  NOT  TO  BE  IDENTIFIED  WITH  DENIAL  OF  THE  COG- 
NOSCIBILITY^  ACCOMPANIED  WITH  AFFIRMATION 
OF  THE  REALITY,  OF  THE  ABSOLUTE.  PROFESSOR 
CALDERWOOD 

Another  mode  of  employing  the  word  agnosticism 
is  the  restriction  of  it  to  a  denial  of  the  cognoscibility 
of  the  absolute,  when  the  denial  is  associated  with  an 
admission  that  the  absolute,  although  unknown  and 
unknowable,  certainly  exists,  and  is  a  legitimate  and 

58 


AGNOSTICISM  AND   THE  ABSOLUTE 

even  necessary  object  of  belief.  Agnosticism  thus 
understood  is  deemed  of  modern  growth,  and  traced 
to  Kant's  theory  of  knowledge.  It  is,  indeed,  virt- 
ually identified  with  the  doctrine  of  Hamilton,  Man- 
sel,  and  Spencer  as  to  the  unconditioned.^ 

Is  it  desirable  to  take  this  limited  view  of  it  ?  I 
think  not.  If  it  may  be  thus  restricted,  why  not  still 
further  ?  Why  not  define  it,  for  example,  as  the  doc- 
trine which  teaches  that  the  absolute  cannot  be  known, 
and  is  to  be  believed  in  only  as  the  cause  everywhere 
present,  and  manifesting  itself  in  all  phenomena  ? 
You  will  thereby  be  freed  from  the  necessity  of  treat- 
ing Christian  theists,  like  Hamilton  and  Mansel,  as 
agnostics,  and  will  mean  by  agnosticism  a  definite 
individual  theory — that  of  Spencer  as  to  the  un- 
knowable. 

It  will  be  said  that  such  definiteness  and  restriction 
would  be  the  reverse  of  merits;  that  by  exclusively 
applying  an  essentially  general  name  to  the  particular 
theory  of  knowledge  held  by  Mr.  Spencer,  the  inti- 
mate affinity  of  his  theory  with  that  of  Hamilton  and 
Mansel  would  be  ignored  or  concealed;  that  it  is 
sufficient  to  say  "  the  agnosticism  of  Spencer,"  when- 
ever this  theory  is  meant,  but  very  inexpedient  on 
any  occasion  to  represent  Mr.  Spencer  and  his  fol- 
lowers as  the  only  agnostics. 

And  all  that  is  true,  and  quite  conclusive  against 
identifying  agnosticism  with  Spencerian  agnosticism. 
It  applies  also,  however,  against  restricting  the  name 

»  See  the  artir^le  Agnosticism  by  Professor  Calderwood  in  Relig- 
ious Encyclopeedia,  edited  by  Dr.  Schaff. 

59 


ERRONEOUS  VIEWS   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

agnosticism  even  to  the  whole  movement  of  specula- 
tion as  to  the  incognoscibility  yet  credibility  of  the 
absolute  with  which  the  names  of  Hamilton,  Mansel, 
and  Spencer  are  familiarly  associated.  The  entire 
doctrine  which  these  authors  hold  in  common  is  but 
a  stage  or  form  of  a  far  older  and  broader  doctrine,  a 
portion  of  a  whole  from  which  it  cannot  without  vio- 
lence and  violation  of  nature  be  severed.  In  the 
negative  and  only  properly  agnostic  element  of  it 
there  is  nothing  original.  The  cognoscibility  of  the 
absolute  has  been  denied  from  the  very  commence- 
ment of  the  history  of  philosophical  scepticism ;  by 
Protagoras  and  Pyrrho  not  less  than  by  Hamilton  or 
Spencer,  although  in  a  different  manner  and  for  dif- 
ferent reasons.  On  the  mere  ground  of  that  denial, 
therefore,  it  is  unreasonable  to  confine  the  name  of 
agnosticism  to  a  class  of  thinkers  who  have  lived  after 
Kant. 

Is  it  said  that  these  thinkers,  while  denying  the 
possibility  of  knowing  the  absolute,  have  yet  affirmed 
the  necessity  of  believing  in  its  existence  either  as 
personality  or  cause,  as  God  or  force  ?  But  this  af- 
firmation also  is  not  original  or  distinctive.  It  had 
been  maintained  by  theologians  ages  before  Kant  and 
Hamilton  associated  their  names  with  it.  It  was  even 
more  generally  approved  among  the  philosophical 
sceptics  of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries 
than  it  has  been  among  those  of  the  nineteenth. 

Besides,  it  does  not  seem  to  be  an  appropriate  rea- 
son for  calling  a  man  an  agnostic  that  he  holds  him- 
self bound  to  believe  more  than  he  can  know.  For  ob- 

60 


NOT  MEKELY  A  MODEEN  THEOEY 

viously  it  implies  that  if  a  man  hold  that  the  absolute 
cannot  he  Jcnoivn  and  ought  not  to  he  helieved  in  he  is 
not  an  agnostic,  but  if  he  hold  that  the  absolute  cannot 
he  known  yet  ought  to  he  helieved  in  he  is  an  agnos- 
tic; in  other  words,  it  makes  the  distinctive  charac- 
teristic of  agnosticism  to  lie  not  in  its  restriction  of 
the  sphere  of  knowledge,  but  in  its  extension  of  the 
sphere  of  belief.  But  to  do  so  is  to  sever  the  connec- 
tion between  the  term  agnosticism  and  its  etymology, 
and  to  that  extent  an  abuse  of  language.  All  who 
hold  the  same  theory  of  knowledge  should  obviously, 
when  viewed  in  respect  to  it,  be  called  by  the  same 
name;  and  all  who  claim  extraordinary  rights  or 
powers  of  belief  should,  when  that  claim  is  in  ques- 
tion, be  designated  by  some  name  indicative  of  its 
nature.  Agnosticism  is  an  appropriate  name  for  a 
certain  theory  of  knowledge,  but  one  altogether  in- 
appropriate for  any  theory  of  belief. 

Hamilton,  Mansel,  Spencer,  and  other  supporters 
of  that  theory  of  nescience  which  found  in  Professor 
C  alder  wood  one  of  its  most  acute  and  careful  critics, 
may  justly  be  called  agnostics  on  account  of  their 
denial  of  the  cognoscibility  of  the  Absolute  or  God, 
just  as  those  w^ho  deny  the  cognoscibility  of  the  Rela- 
tive, whether  World  or  Self,  may  be  fairly  so  desig- 
nated. But,  it  seems  to  me,  one  cannot  consistently 
limit  the  name  of  agnostic  to  those  who  deny  the  cog- 
noscibility of  the  Absolute,  and  still  less  to  those  who, 
while  denying  its  cognoscibility,  affirm  their  faith  in 
its  reality.  A  philosophically  maintained  belief  in  the 
incognoscibility  of  the  Absolute  is  not  coextensive 

61 


ERRONEOUS   VIEWS   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

with  the  theory  or  doctrine  of  nescience,  but  only  with 
a  theory  or  doctrine  of  a  certain  kind  of  nescience. 
The  term  agnostotheism  might,  perhaps,  be  an  appro- 
priate term  for  the  theory  which  denies  the  cognosci- 
bility  of  God,  and  agnostotheists  for  its  upholders. 
My  Greek  does  not  suggest  to  me  a  suitable  designa- 
tion for  the  theory  which  at  once  denies  knowledge  of 
and  affirms  faith  in  God.  Possibly  even  the  Greek 
language  may  not  be  found  readily  to  supply  a  con- 
venient term  for  such  a  tenet  as  that  what  is  entirely 
unknowable  ought  nevertheless  to  be  believed. 

VI.  koberty's  views  on  the  nature  op  ag- 
nosticism  STATED   AND   CRITICISED 

An  able  French  publicist — M.  E.  de  Koberty — has 
during  recent  years  treated  of  agnostisicm  in  a  very 
ingenious  and  independent  manner  in  several  works 
the  titles  of  which  are  given  below.^  His  peculiar 
view  of  its  character  is  naturally  and  logically  de- 
pendent on  the  thoroughness  of  his  empiricism. 

For  M.  de  Roberty,  as  for  Professor  Calderwood, 
agnosticism  is  "  the  doctrine  of  the  unknowable  "  ; 
but  he  holds  that  the  doctrine  of  the  unknowable  is  in- 
clusive of  "  the  whole  of  religion  and  the  whole  of 
metaphysics,"  and  not  merely  of  such  phases  of  belief 
regarding  the  unknowable  as  the  so-called  critical  ag- 

'  L'Ancienne  et  la  Novvelle  Philosophie,  1887.  L'Inconnaissable, 
Sa  Metaphysique,  Sa  Psychologies  1889.  La  Philosophie  du  Sikle- 
Criticisme-Positivisme-Evolutionismes  1891.  Agnosticism  e.  Essai 
sur  qiielqties  thiories  pessimistes  de  la  connaissance,  1892.  La 
Recherche  de  I'xmite,  1893.   Auguste  Comte  et  Herbert  Spencer •,  1894. 

6Ji 


I)E   ROBERT Y   ON  AGNOSTICISM 

nostioism  of  Kant,  positivist  agnosticism  of  Comte, 
conditional  agnosticism  of  Hamilton  and  Mansel,  or 
evolutionist  agnosticism  of  Spencer. 

The  latter,  according  to  M.  de  Roberty,  far  from 
really  being  what  their  adherents,  the  advanced  spir- 
its of  our  epoch,  suppose  them  to  be — the  last  and 
highest  results  of  a  long  legitimate  evolution,  or  re- 
cent and  valuable  acquisitions  of  philosophy,  or  direct 
negations  of  all  religion  and  metaphysics — are  only 
nineteenth  century  phases  of  a  process  of  illusion 
which  goes  back  to,  and  is  essentially  one  with,  prim- 
itive fetichism.  Agnosticism,  he  holds,  is  a  very 
complex  illusion,  which  has  its  roots  in  a  great  num- 
ber of  similar  illusions,  some  of  which  arq  of  a  psychi- 
cal and  others  of  a  social  nature ;  and  when  this  com- 
plex phenomenon  is  analysed  there  is  found  to  be  a 
perfect  identity  between  the  central  conception  of  the 
most  primitive  religions,  or  of  the  most  outgrown 
metaphysical  systems,  and  the  notion  of  the  unknow- 
able. Religious  faiths,  metaphysical  doctrines,  and 
agnostic  beliefs  are,  in  his  view,  perfectly  homologous 
groups  of  sociological  phenomena,  fulfilling  essential- 
ly the  same  functions  and  following  the  same  laws  of 
metamorphosis.  The  unknowable  plurality  of  inac- 
cessibles  accepted  by  Comte  is  akin  to  polytheism; 
the  Unknowable  in  the  singular  revered  by  Mr.  Spen- 
cer is  akin  to  theological  monism ;  the  faith  of  Ham- 
ilton in  an  unknowable  Unconditioned  is  a  revival  of 
the  belief  in  the  supernatural  characteristic  of  the 
primitive  state  of  humanity — a  case  of  intellectual 
atavism.      Supernatural  and  unknowable  are  only  dif- 

G3 


ERRONEOUS  VIEWS  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

ferent  names  for  the  same  thing ;  and  in  all  religions 
there  is  the  same  supernaturalism,  in  all  philosophies 
the  same  agnosticism.  Religion  is  an  unconscious  ag- 
nosticism; metaphysics  a  semi-unconscious  agnosti- 
cism, varying  according  to  the  epoch  of  time  and  the 
type  of  system — materialistic,  idealistic,  or  sensual- 
istic — to  which  it  belongs;  and  the  avowed  agnosti- 
cism of  to-day  is  a  stage  of  the  same  process.  So  far 
from  being  the  formal  negation  of  theology  and  its 
eldest  daughter  metaphysics,  it  is  simply  their  mod- 
ern form,  their  direct  descendant  and  legitimate  heir- 
ess. 

M.  de  Roberty  foresees  that  the  view  which  he 
gives  of  aguQsticism  will  be  objected  to  on  the  ground, 
that  whereas  what  he  calls  ancient  agnosticism  (re- 
ligion and  metaphysics)  pursued  the  search  of  the 
unknowable  with  faith  and  hope,  modern  agnosticism 
deliberately  renounces  such  search  and  expressly  ac- 
knowledges that  the  absolute  cannot  be  known, — that 
all  quest  of  first  and  final  causes  must  fail.  He  deals, 
however,  with  the  objection,  and  concludes  that  it  is 
worthless.  Those  who  pursue  objects  which  turn  out 
to  be  absurdities,  and  those  who  renounce  pursuit  of 
them  because  they  always  so  turn  out,  yet  continue  to 
theorise  on  them  as  unattainable,  as  unknowable,  are, 
he  holds,  in  the  same  self -contradictory  position  and 
labouring  under  an  essentially  identical  delusion. 
Between  the  unknowable  which  one  seeks  to  render 
knowable  by  extra-scientific  processes,  and  the  un- 
knowable which  one  cannot  know  by  the  methods  of 
science  and  consequently  abandons  to  methods  of  spec- 

64 


BELIEF  IN  THE  UNKNOWABLE 

ulatioii  which  science  forbids,  there  is  only  the  slight- 
est and  most  shadowy  of  distinctions.  All  forms  of 
belief  in  the  unknowable, — although  so  many  meta- 
physicians regard  them  as  irreducible,  just  as  zoolo- 
gists so  regarded  animal  species  in  the  days  of  Cuvier, 
— are  of  the  same  nature  and  stages  of  the  same 
evolutionary  process. 

Roberty  denies  the  legitimacy  of  belief  in  the  un- 
knowable in  all  its  forms,  but  combats  it  chiefly  in 
such  as  are  characteristic  of  the  present  age.  Mod- 
ern agnosticism  he  recognises,  indeed,  to  be  incapable 
of  acting  on  humanity  either  for  good  or  evil  with 
anything  like  the  power  of  the  older  agnostic  systems. 
It  seems  to  him  to  be  even  in  the  forms  which  have 
been  given  to  it  by  Kant,  Comte,  and  Spencer,  un- 
worthy of  attention  for  any  intrinsic  merits.  But  he 
deems  it  to  be  of  prime  interest  notwithstanding  its 
inherent  weakness  and  poverty,  inasmuch  as  it  is 
"  the  last  citadel  of  metaphysics," — "  almost  the  only 
phantom  of  the  theological  past  of  humanity  which 
has  not  been  exorcised  by  science," — "  the  only  sur- 
viving chief  of  what  M.  Taine  calls  '  the  army  of  ver- 
bal entities  which  had  formerly  invaded  all  provinces 
of  nature,  and  which  during  three  hundred  years  the 
progress  of  science  had  been  overthrowing  one  by 
one.'  "  When  it  is  universally  recognised  to  be  a 
pseudo-concept,  a  merely  "  verbal  entity,"  and  think- 
ers cease  to  occupy  their  minds  with  it,  then,  he  holds, 
all  science  falsely  so  called  will  have  at  length  come 
to  be  disowned,  and  all  theological  and  metaphysical 
rubbish  swept  away.     Positive  science  will  receive 

65 


EKEONEOUS  VIEWS  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

the  honour  due  to  it,  and  a  scientific  philosophy  capa- 
ble of  serving  as  an  adequate  basis  to  aesthetic  and  in- 
dustrial art  will  begin  to  be  constituted. 

The  state  of  positive  science  reached  in  any  age  has 
always  been,  according  to  Eoberty,  the  determining 
cause  of  the  character  of  the  philosophy  of  the  age. 
Religion  was  evolved  from  least  knowledge,  meta- 
physics through  a  further  growth  of  knowledge,  and 
contemporary  agnosticism  testifies  by  its  very  vague- 
ness and  emptiness  to  the  pressure  and  predominance 
of  science.  But  religion,  metaphysics,  and  contem- 
porary agnosticism  are  not  stages  of  theorising  which 
lead  up  to  or  pass  into  science.  There  is  no  natural 
or  logical  transition  from  the  unknowable  to  the 
known.  There  has  always  been  knowledge,  and 
knowledge  has  always  been  positive,  or  in  other  words, 
of  the  nature  of  science,  for  there  is  no  other  knowl- 
edge. Contemporary  agnosticism  is  no  more  occu- 
pied with  an  object  of  knowledge,  and  has  no  more  a 
scientific  character,  than  fetichism.  The  unknowa- 
ble is  altogether  an  illusion,  and  when  examined  al- 
ways vanishes  in  the  unknown.  We  know  absolutely 
nothing  of  the  limits  which  separate  the  certain  do- 
main of  the  unknown  from  the  problematical  domain 
of  the  unknowable. 

Such  is  the  general  view  of  agnosticism  presented 
in  the  able  and  suggestive  works  of  M.  de  Roberty.  It 
is  just  the  view  which  we  should  naturally  expect  to 
be  given  by  one  who  surveys  the  realm  of  knowledge 
from  the  particular  intellectual  standpoint  which  he 
occupies.     Being  not  only  an  independent  and  cou- 

66 


HIS  USE   OF  THE  TERM 

rageous  but  an  exceptionally  consistent  and  logical 
thinker,  he  is  generally  able  in  criticising  the  agnos- 
tic doctrines  of  the  present  day  to  show  that  those  who 
propound  them  are  not  as  faithful  to  their  own  prin- 
ciples as  he  himself  is,  but  have  involved  themselves 
in  contradictions  which  they  should  have,  and  which 
he  has,  avoided.  His  attacks  on  these  doctrines  are 
made  from  the  same  position  on  which  their  defenders 
stand,  but  which  he  easily  proves  that  they  have  no 
right  to  occupy  unless  they  surrender  them;  and  so 
clearly  has  he,  on  the  whole,  consistency  and  reason 
on  his  side,  that  professed  agnostics  are  much  more 
likely  to  say  nothing  regarding  his  assaults  than  to 
attempt  to  repel  them. 

Probably  no  one  else  has  given  so  extensive  a  sig- 
nification to  the  word  agnosticism  as  he  has  done,  but 
the  way  in  which  he  employs  it  cannot  be  denied  to 
be  in  entire  accordance  with  his  philosophical  stand- 
point and  principles.  These  being  what  they  are,  he 
is  clearly  entitled  to  regard  all  religionists  and  meta- 
physicians as  well  as  all  professors  of  the  creed  of 
nescience  as  agnostics.  He  has  as  much  right  to  use 
the  word  in  the  very  wide  sense  which  he  attaches  to 
it  as  I  have  to  use  it  in  a  much  more  restricted  one. 
We  both  employ  it  in  the  same  way,  namely,  with 
reference  to  what  is  deemed  unknowable.  While 
differing  widely  we  differ  only  as  to  the  limits  within 
which  knowledge  lies.  He  denies  and  I  affirm  that 
men  can  attain,  and  have  attained,  to  a  knowledge  of 
theological  and  metaphysical  truths.  To  me  there 
seems  to  be  hardly  any  fact  of  which  we  may  be,  and 

67 


EREONEOUS   VIEWS   OF  AGNOSTICLSM 

ought  to  be,  so  certain  as  of  the  existence  and  govern- 
ment of  a  Supreme  Being,  omnipotent  and  omnipres- 
ent, omniscient  and  righteous.  For  thinking  so  M, 
de  Roberty  must  include  me  among  agnostics,  seeing 
that  he  supposes  that  belief  in  God  is  never  knowledge 
but  always  illusion.  I,  on  the  other  hand,  just  be- 
cause he  thinks  so — just  because  he  deems  to  be  neces- 
sarily illusion  what  I  hold  to  be  adequately  evidenced 
truth — am  compelled  to  consider  him  to  be  the  real 
agnostic;  one  who  would  extrude  from  the  realm  of 
knowledge  a  province  which  rightfully  belongs  to  it. 
This  shows  how  relative  and  personal  our  views  of 
agnosticism  and  applications  of  the  term  agnostic  are, 
but  it  does  not  imply  injustice  on  either  side,  or  tend 
to  obliterate  differences,  or  to  conceal  or  confuse  any 
issues  involved. 

M.  de  Roberty  has  given  expression  to  many  orig- 
inal ideas,  and  formulated  many  interesting  generali- 
sations. He  has  traced  with  searching  vision  the 
main  currents  of  human  thought,  and  set  in  a  fresh 
light  the  interrelations  of  the  chief  systems  of  specu- 
lation. He  is  especially  instructive  when  he  treats 
of  the  philosophical  strivings  of  the  present  time,  and 
has,  perhaps,  successfully  shown  that  very  much  of 
what  has  been  written  about  the  unknowable  by  con- 
temporary agnostics  is  as  nonsensical  as  anything  of 
an  analogous  kind  which  can  be  laid  to  the  charge  of 
medieval  scholastics.  What  alone  concerns  us  here, 
however,  is  the  question,  Has  he  made  out  tliat  all 
metaphysics  and  all  theology  are  of  an  agnostic  char- 
acter ?  And  that  question  I  can  only  answer  in  the 
negative, 

68 


DE  ROBERTY  AND   METAPHYSICS 

As  to  metaphysics,  I  can  nowhere  find  that  he 
clearly  tells  us  what  he  means  by  it.  That  it  was 
incumbent  on  him  to  do  seeing  that  there  are  various 
and  conflicting  conceptions  as  to  its  subject  and  lim- 
its. It  can  surely  not  be  held  that  in  no  sense  which 
can  reasonably  be  given  to  the  word  will  it  designate 
a  section  or  province  of  real  knowledge.  And  even 
should  M.  de  Roberty  be  of  that  opinion  he  has  not 
shown  its  correctness.  To  most  of  his  readers  his 
own  works  will  assuredly  be  thought  to  consist  largely 
of  metaphysical  reflections.  The  positions  from  which 
he  reasons  and  the  results  at  which  he  arrives  are 
rarely  the  data  or  the  generalisations  of  physical 
science;  they  are,  in  the  plain  etymological  sense  of 
the  term,  metaphysical  views,  although  they  may 
have  a  reference  to  physical  fads.  How  any  sort  of 
theorising  as  to  the  attainability  of  knowledge  or  as 
to  the  merits  or  demerits  of  knowledge  can  be  other 
than  metaphysical  in  character  is  so  difficult  to  under- 
stand that  it  should  not  be  left  unexplained  by  one 
who  believes  in  its  possibility — which  I  do  not. 
Wherever  thought  is,  even  although  it  be  thought 
^bout  objects  of  sense,  there  is  something,  and  even 
much,  which  is  real,  and  yet  not  physical  but  meta- 
physical. 

As  to  theology  also  M.  de  Roberty  seems  to  me  to 
have  wholly  failed  to  justify  his  inclusion  of  it  in  ag- 
nosticism, although  his  consistency  in  regarding  and 
describing  it  as  agnosticism  be  unquestionable.  Anti- 
theological  agnostics  would  almost  seem  to  have  en- 
tered into  a  conspiracy  not  to  adopt  the  only  method 

69 


EKRONEOUS  VIEWS   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

of  establishing  the  truth  of  their  own  doctrine  which 
can  possibly  be  satisfactory.  Instead  of  applying 
themselves  to  show  that  the  alleged  rational  bases  of 
theology  are  unsound,  they,  with  comparatively  few 
exceptions,  prefer  to  adduce  reasons  for  declining  the 
task  so  obviously  incumbent  on  them.  They  too 
often  deem  it  sufficient  to  assume  that  it  is  one  which 
is  unnecessary  in  the  present  enlightened  age,  or  to 
assert  that  there  can  be  no  knowledge  except  within 
empirical  laws.  M.  de  Roberty  attempts  to  do  more, 
but  to  little  purpose.  He  lays  down  as  a  psychologi- 
cal discovery  of  his  0"\vn  what  he  calls  "  the  law  of  the 
identity  of  super-abstract  contraries."  What  he 
means  thereby  is  that  such  lofty  abstract  correlatives 
as  God  and  the  universe,  noumenon  and  phenomenon, 
infinite  and  finite,  absolute  and  relative,  although  ap- 
parently opposed,  are  really  equivalent  and  synony- 
mous. And  from  this  law  he  concludes  that  the  word 
God  signifies  only  the  universe  or  an  abstract  idea  of 
it,  the  infinite  only  the  pure  or  abstract  finite,  &c.  Of 
course,  were  it  so  theology  could  only  be  a  science 
falsely  so  called,  one  exclusively  occupied  with  illu- 
sions generated  by  the  inherent  weakness  and  falla- 
ciousness of  human  thought. 

But  is  it  so  ?  Rather,  is  not  the  alleged  law  a  mere 
paradox  ?  Our  author,  at  least,  has  not  yet  shown  it 
to  be  anything  else.  Certainly  he  has  in  no  way 
proved  it,  and  it  may  well  be  doubted  if  he  has  per- 
suaded a  single  individual  to  believe  in  the  truth  of 
it.  So  long  as  he  has  not  proved  it,  or  shown  theo- 
logians that  what  they  consider  to  be  evidences  of 

70 


MR.   LESLIE  STEPHEN'S  VIEW 

God's  agency  in  the  physical  universe,  in  historical 
development,  and  spiritual  experience  have  been  mis- 
interpreted by  them,  he  cannot  be  held  to  have  made 
out  that  theology  is  a  species  of  agnosticism. 

VII.  CEITICISM  OF  LESLIE  STEPHEN''s  VIEWS  OF 
AGNOSTICISM. 

There  is  yet  another  view  of  agnosticism  which  it 
appears  to  me  ought  to  be  rejected.  It  proceeds  on 
the  assumption  that  the  attitude  of  the  mind  to  knowl- 
edge may  be  fairly  described  as  either  gnostic  or  ag- 
nostic; that  every  individual  thinker  who  is  not  an 
agnostic  must  be  a  gnostic.  This  view  Mr.  Leslie 
Stephen  has  adopted.  Hence  his  "  Agnostic's  Apol- 
ogy "  begins  thus : — 

"  The  name  Agnostic,  originally  coined  by  Professor 
Huxley  about  1869,  has  gained  general  acceptance.  It  is 
sometimes  used  to  indicate  the  philosophical  theory  which 
Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  as  he  tells  us,  developed  from  the  doc- 
trine of  Hamilton  and  Mansel.  Upon  that  theory  I  ex- 
press no  opinion.  I  take  the  word  in  a  vaguer  sense,  and 
am  glad  to  believe  that  its  use  indicates  an  advance  in  the 
courtesies  of  controversy.  The  old  theological  phrase  for 
an  intellectual  opponent  was  Atheist — a  name  which  still 
retains  a  certain  flavour  as  of  the  stake  in  this  world  and 
hell-fire  in  the  next,  and  which,  moreover,  implies  an  in- 
accuracy of  some  importance.  Dogmatic  Atheism — the 
doctrine  that  there  is  no  God,  whatever  may  be  meant  by 
God — is,  to  say  the  least,  a  rare  phase  of  opinion.  The 
word  Agnosticism,  on  the  other  hand,  seems  to  imply  a 
fairly  accurate  representation  of  a  form  of  creed  already 
common  and  daily  spreading.  The  Agnostic  is  one  who  as- 
serts— ^what  no  one  •denies — that  there  are  limits  to  the 
sphere  of  human  intelligence.     He  asserts,  further,   what 

71 


EKKONEOUS  VIEWS   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

many  theologians  have  expressly  maintained,  that  those 
limits  are  such  as  to  exclude  at  least  what  Lewes  calls 
'  metempirical '  knowledge.  But  he  goes  further  and  as- 
serts, in  opposition  to  theologians,  that  theology  lies  with- 
in this  forbidden  sphere.  This  last  assertion  raises  the  im- 
portant issue  ;  and,  though  I  have  no  pretension  to  invent 
an  opposition  nickname,  I  may  venture,  for  the  purposes 
of  this  article,  to  describe  the  rival  school  as  Gnostics. 
The  Gnostic  holds  that  our  reason  can,  in  some  sense, 
transcend  the  narrow  limits  of  experience.  He  holds  that 
we  can  attain  truths  not  capable  of  verification,  and  not 
needing  verification,  by  actual  experiment  or  verification. 
He  holds,  further,  that  a  knowledge  of  those  truths  is  es- 
sential to  the  highest  interests  of  mankind,  and  enables  us 
in  some  sort  to  solve  the  dark  riddle  of  the  universe. ' '  i 

With  much  that  is  said  there  I  cannot  agree.  The 
substitution  of  the  name  agnostic  for  atheist  may  in- 
dicate no  advance  in  the  courtesies  of  controversy. 
The  application  of  the  term  gnostic  to  all  who  are  not 
atheistic  may  be  deemed  to  indicate  the  opposite. 
There  may  have  been  a  lack  of  courtesy  shown  by  the 
early  Christian  writers  who  turned  into  a  nickname 
the  name  of  gnostic  which  some  of  their  adversaries 
applied  to  themselves  as  a  title  of  honour ;  but  surely 
to  call  all  who  are  not  atheists  gnostics,  a  name  which 
has  never  been  so  used  before,  and  which  has  been  in 
bad  repute  among  Christians  almost  since  the  days  of 
St.  Paul,  is  still  less  courteous.  The  term  atheist  must 
be  admitted  to  have  been  often  applied  in  a  reckless 
and  unjust  way,  but  to  say  that  it  was  "  the  old  theo- 
logical phrase  for  an  intellectual  opponent "  is  itself 
not  an  accurate  or  fair  statement^  The  "  flavour  " 
'  An  Agnostic's  Apology  and  Other  Essays,  pp.  1,  2. 
72 


MK.   STEPHEN'S   VIEW  EXAMINED 

of  which  Mr.  Stephen  speaks  is  not  inherent  in  the 
word,  and  is  felt  only  by  the  vulgar,  to  whom  the  term 
agnostic,  when  employed  as  equivalent  to  atheist,  will 
have  just  the  same  flavour. 

The  word  atheist  is  a  thoroughly  honest,  unambig- 
uous term.  It  means  one  who  does  not  believe  in 
God,  and  it  means  neither  more  nor  less.  It  implies 
neither  blame  nor  approval,  neither  desert  of  punish- 
ment nor  of  reward.  If  a  purely  dogmatic  atheism 
be  a  rare  phase  of  opinion  critical  atheism  is  a  very 
common  one,  and  there  is  also  a  form  of  atheism  not 
uncommon  which  is  professedly  sceptical  or  agnostic, 
but  often  in  reality  dogmatic  or  gnostic. 

So  far  from  the  word  agnosticism,  on  the  other 
hand,  implying,  as  Mr.  Stej)hen  says,  a  fairly  accu- 
rate representation  of  a  creed  which  asserts  that  theol- 
ogy falls  without  the  sphere  of  knowledge,  it  has  no 
special  reference  whatever  tq_theology.  It  denotes 
merely  a  theory  of  knowledge,  and  so  may  apply  to 
any  or  every  spfieTe  of  conceivable  existence;  but  it 
no  more  implies  theology  to  be  beyond  the  limits  of 
human  intelligence  than  physiology  or  psychology. 
An  agnostic  may  be  either  a  theist  or  an  atheist. 
There  are  theological  as  well  as  anti-theological  ag- 
nostics ;  and  to  call  the  former  gnostics  is  as  manifest- 
ly an  abuse  of  language  as  it  would  be  to  call  the 
latter  so. 

Mr.  Stephen's  attempted  delineation  of  a  gnostic 
is  not  a  recognisable  likeness.  "  The  gnostic  holds 
that  our  reason  can,  in  some  measure,  transcend  the 
narrow  limits  of  experience."     And  so  do  many  ag- 

73 


ERROKEOUS  VIEWS  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

nostics,  including,  I  imagine,  Mr.  Stephen  himself. 
Experience !  What  sort  of  experience  ?  Does  Mr. 
Stephen  hold  that  human  reason  cannot  transcend  the 
'  narrow  limits  of  sense-experience  ?  If  so,  it  is  clear 
that  he  ought  to  sacrifice  to  his  agnosticism  mathe- 
matical, mental,  and  moral  science,  as  they  all  tran- 
scend the  narrow  limits  of  such  experience.  If  not, 
he  is  not  entitled  to  assume  that  religion  and  theology 
themselves  may  not  lie  within  the  limits  of  a  real  al- 
though non-sensuous  experience.  No  cautious  think- 
er will  aifirm  that  reason  can  transcend  tlie  limits  of 
all  experience,  seeing  that  the  only  known  limits  of 
universal  experience  are  the  laws  of  reason  itself.  Ex- 
perience extends  just  so  far  as  reason  can  go  without 
violating  its  own  laws,  and  so  ceasing  to  be  reasona- 
ble. A  man  who  simply  asserts  that  reason  cannot 
transcend  this  or  that  species  of  experience  is  a  pure 
dogmatist ;  he  may  call  himself  in  good  faith  an  ag- 
nostic, but  is  really  a  gnostic,  so  befogged  as  not  to 
know  what  or  where  he  is. 

"He"  (the  gnostic),  Mr.  Stephen  further  says, 
"  holds  that  we  can  attain  truths  not  capable  of  veri- 
fication, and  not  needing  verification,  by  actual  exper- 
iment or  verification."  This  trait  also  is  not  dis- 
tinctive of  theologians,  Mr.  Stephen's  so-called  gnos- 
tics. Speaking  generally,  they  neither  hold  religious 
truth  to  be  incapable  of  verification  nor  to  be  without 
need  of  it.  They  hold,  on  the  contrary,  that  religious 
truth  can  and  ought  to  be  verified.  They  have  always 
done  so  more  or  less ;  and  at  the  present  day  their  best 
representatives  are  characterised  by  the  earnestness 

74 


HIS  INJUSTICE  TO   THEOLOGIANS 

with  which  they  insist  on  the  importance  of  verifica- 
tion in  religion.  But,  of  course,  they  maintain  at 
the  same  time  that  the  verification  must  be  of  an  ap- 
propriate kind — one  which  has  a  real  and  intelligible 
relation  to  the  nature  of  religious  truth  and  of  relig- 
ious experience.  If  the  verification  demanded  be 
that  of  physical  sensible  experience,  then  the  de- 
ductions of  the  mathematician  and  the  inductions  of 
the  historian  are  unverifiable,  and  all  that  claims  to 
be  mental  or  moral  truth  must  be  rejected  by  science. 
Colours  are  not  to  be  discriminated  by  the  same  organ 
and  processes  as  sounds ;  physics  and  chemistry  apply 
different  standards  and  tests;  and  religion  is  in  like 
manner  to  be  judged  by  criteria  which  can  be  reason- 
ably applied  to  it.  To  ask  that  spiritual  truth 
should  be  verified  by  a  sens] hip  pypprityiiPTifal  prnnf  ia 
to  asKjghat-is-saifrcontraiiigtory — namely,  that  such 
truth  should  be  both  what  it  is  and  is  not,  both  spirit- 
ual and  physical.  As  spiritual  it  can  only  be  verified 
by  spiritual  beings  through  spiritual  perceptions  and 
experiences.  That  it  cannot  be  verified  at  all  is  a 
mere  dogmatic  assertion.  No  proof  or  verification 
has  ever  been  given  of  that  assertion. 

Mr.  Stephen  adds:  "he"  (the  gnostic)  "holds, 
further,  that  a  knowledge  of  those  truths  "  ("  metem- 
pirical  "  truths)  "  is  essential  to  the  highest  interests 
of  mankind,  and  enables  us  in  some  sort  to  solve  the 
dark  riddle  of  the  universe."  The  addition  is  not  an 
improvement.  The  sole  essential  difference  of  opin- 
ion between  the  agnostic  and  his  opponent  is  as  to  the 
attainability  or  unattainability  of  truth  beyond  cer- 

75 


ERRONEOUS   VIEWS   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

tain  limits ;  the  value  of  truth  is  not  in  question.  The 
agnostic  does  not  deny  that  a  reliable  knowledge  of 
God,  were  it  attained,  would  be  of  high  value,  and 
could  not  fail  to  dispel  much  darkness.  Keal  knowl- 
edge of  every  kind  is  useful  and  enlightening.  Belief 
in  the  value  of  truth  is  common  to  agnostic  and  gnos- 
tic, and  hence  should  have  had  no  place  assigned  to  it 
in  Mr.  Stephen's  definition  of  a  gnostic.  The  intro- 
duction of  it  serves  no  legitimate  end,  although  it 
may  give  some  slight  colour  of  relevancy  to  various 
assertions  and  reasonings  which  are  really  irrelevant 
in  "  An  Agnostic's  Apology." 

What  I  wish,  however,  chiefly  to  emphasise  in  con- 
nection with  the  view  under  consideration  is  that  the 
terms  agnosticism  and  gnosticism  can  only  be  rea- 
sonably understood  by  the  generality  of  thinkers  as 
of  the  same  character  as,  for  example,  empiricism  and 
rationalism,  individualism  and  socialism,  scepticism 
and  dogmatism.  That  is  to  say,  they  belong  to  the 
class  of  words  which  denote  extreme  and  contrary  ten- 
dencies, widely  divergent  and  opposed  schemes  of 
thought,  the  narrowness  and  exclusiveness  of  which 
wise  men  oiidoavour  to  avoid.  It  is  between  such  an- 
tithetic extremes  as  such  words  denote  that  the  gen- 
eral course  of  belief,  and  the  main  movements  of 
thought,  and  far  the  larger  portion  of  knowledge  ac- 
quired by  speculation  and  research,  are  to  be  found. 

The  philosophical  world  is  happily  not  divided  into 
empiricists  and  rationalists, — those  who  would  evolve 
all  knowledge  out  of  sensation  and  those  who  would 
resolve  it  all  into  reason.     Hardly  any  are  purely  em- 

76 


MISUSE   OF  TERMS 

piricists  or  exclusively  rationalists.  Many,  indeed, 
ascribe  so  much  to  sense  and  so  little  to  reason,  and 
many  others  so  much  to  reason  and  so  little  to  sense, 
that  they  can  without  injustice  be  characterised  as 
empiricists  and  rationalists  respectively,  if  it  be  suf- 
ficiently recognised  that  they  alike  allow  to  some  ex- 
tent both  sense  and  reason  to  be  constituents  of 
knowledge.  The  great  majority  of  philosophers, 
however,  attach  so  much  weight  to  both  the  empirical 
and  the  rationalist  elements  of  knowledge  that  to  de- 
scribe them  as  either  empiricists  or  rationalists  is 
manifestly  unfair. 

The  social  world,  in  like  manner,  cannot  be  rea- 
sonably divided,  as  so  many  socialists  would  have  us 
do,  into  socialists  and  individualists, — themselves 
and  others, — the  sheep  and  goats  of  humanity.  Those 
who  call  themselves,  or  can  justly  be  called,  individ- 
ualists are  few ;  and  of  those  who  call  themselves  so- 
cialists a  considerable  number  appeal  more  to  indi- 
vidual selfishness  than  those  whom  they  denounce  as 
individualists,  and  an  even  greater  number  designate 
themselves  socialists  largely  from  aversion  to  being 
designated  by  others  individualists.  The  pretenders 
to  the  name  of  socialists  outnumber  those  who  are 
entitled  to  it,  and  of  those  who  are  entitled  to  it  com- 
paratively few  are  students  of  social  or  any  other 
science.  The  real  students  of  the  social  sciences,  for 
the  most  part,  regard  both  individualism  and  social- 
ism as  irrational  and  dangerous  aberrations. 

At  the  present  day  many  profess  to  be  agnostics, 
but  no  one  will  allow  that  he  is  a  gnostic.     The  latter 

77 


EKRONEOUS  VIEWS   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

designation  is  old,  and  it  early  ceased  to  be  regarded 
as  complimentary.  The  former  being  of  recent  in- 
vention, is  as  yet  comparatively  unsuggestive  of 
obnoxious  associations  such  as  cling  to  the  terms  gnos- 
tic, sceptic,  and  dogmatist.  It  is  to  this  circumstance, 
and  especially  to  the  discredit  into  which  the  term 
sceptic  has  fallen,  not  to  its  own  merits,  that  it  owes 
most  of  what  popularity  it  possesses.  Inevitably, 
however,  disagreeable  associations  will  in  course  of 
time  attach  themselves  also  to  it.  The  inherent  de- 
fects of  agnosticism  are  sufficient  of  themselves  to 
ensure  this.  The  eagerness  of  atheists  to  exchange 
their  own  name  for  that  of  agnostics  must  hasten  the 
degradation  of  the  latter  term.  A  reckless  applica- 
tion of  the  term  gnostics  to  theists  can  only  tend  to  the 
same  end.  It  is  desirable  that  the  term  agnostic 
should  be  as  long  as  possible  kept  as  pure  as  possible. 
Those  who  feel  so  will  not,  I  think,  approve  of  Mr. 
Leslie  Stephen's  use  of  it. 

The  antithesis  of  scepticism  and  dogmatism  coin- 
cides to  a  great  extent  with  that  of  agnosticism  and 
gnosticism.  The  former  refers  more  directly  to  the 
subjective  and  the  latter  to  the  objective  side  or  as- 
pect of  the  same  contrast;  the  one  more  to  the  dispo- 
sition and  attitude  of  the  mind  towards  knowledge, 
and  the  other  more  to  the  range  and  limits  of  knowl- 
edge in  relation  to  the  mind.  Whenever  they  are 
usefully  employed  both  sets  of  terms  imply  the  same 
antithesis  and  denote  the  same  extremes. 

The  words  scepticism  and  dogmatism  in  themselves 
imply  nothing  excessive,  defective,  or  blamable.     Re- 

78 


SCEPTICISM  AND   DOGMATISM 

garded  simply  from  an  etymological  point  of  view, 
scepticism  may  quite  reasonably  be  defined  as  the 
search  for  truth  and  dogmatism  as  the  holding  of 
truth.  Unfortunately  when  so  defined  they  are  use- 
less. They  indicate  no  contrast ;  seeking  truth  is  not 
the  antithesis  but  the  condition  of  finding  it.  And, 
further,  the  history  of  the  words  has  made  it  impos- 
sible for  us  so  to  employ  them.  Although  807- 
lutrti^eiv  and  ho^fiariK6<i  did  not  originally  suggest 
intellectual  rashness,  opinionativeness,  over-confi- 
dence, and  therefore  did  not  signify  what  we  now 
mean  by  dogmatising  and  dogmatical,  nor  did  aKe^L^; 
and  (TKeiTTiKo^  imply  excessive  doubt  of  the  existence 
or  attainability  of  truth  or  aversion  to  recognise  evi- 
dence, and  therefore  did  not  mean  scepticism,  or  scep- 
tical in  their  current  sense,  they  naturally  and  inevi- 
tably acquired  those  unfavourable  implications,  and 
had  their  significations  determined  accordingly. 

The  majority  of  the  Greek  philosophers  of  post- 
Socratic  times  were  characterised  by  all  that  is  im- 
plied in  the  worst  sense  of  the  word  dogmatism. 
They  were  divided  into  contentious,  self-assertive, 
proselytising  schools,  each  so  very  sure  of  possessing 
the  whole  truth,  and  so  unwilling  to  allow  that  others 
might  have  a  share  of  it,  that  many  persons  felt 
doubtful  if  there  were  any  such  thing  as  truth,  and  at 
least  if  truth  were  discoverable.  Hence  the  rise  of 
a  school  of  reasoners  against  reason,  ready  to  dispute 
everything,  and  professing  either  to  be  certain  only 
that  nothing  was  certain  or  that  not  even  that  was  cer- 
tain.    Hence,  also,  the  words  dogmatism  and  dog- 

79 


ERRONEOUS  VIEWS   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

matic,  scepticism  and  sceptical,  came  to  denote  two 
opposed  extremes  of  philosophical  tem])er,  tendency, 
and  opinion.  They  are  of  service  to  denote  the  ex- 
tremes ;  but  it  is  unwarrantable  to  represent  every 
philosophical  system  as  a  form  either  of  dogmatism 
or  of  scepticism  and  all  philosophers  as  either  dog- 
matists or  sceptics.  Could  that  be  done  with  justice 
all  philosophy  would  be  abnormal  and  extravagant. 
Every  cautious,  circumspect,  essentially  sane  and 
catholic  philosophy  is  neither  dogmatic  nor  sceptical. 


80 


CHAPTER  III 
HISTORY  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

I.  INTKODUCTOEY.       ORIENTAL  AGNOSTICISM 

Agnosticism  is  not  merely  a  kind  of  theorising,  but 
also  a  historical  fact,  and  one  of  considerable  magni- 
tude, importance,  and  interest.  It  is  older  than 
Christianity  or  than  any  European  nation,  and  has 
followed  a  course  just  as  real  and  traceable  as  that  of 
a  religion  or  a  kingdom.  It  has  passed  through  a 
variety  of  stages,  assumed  many  forms,  been  at  sun- 
dry times  prevalent,  and  shows  at  the  present  day  no 
signs  of  exhaustion.  It  has  commended  itself  to  men 
of  very  different  types  of  character,  and  its  leading 
representatives  have  been  distinguished  in  philoso- 
phy, theology,  science,  literature,  and  even  in  politics 
and  other  spheres  of  practical  life.  It  is  clearly  not 
a  mere  creation  of  human  wilfulness  or  exemplifica- 
tion of  human  folly,  but  a  something  deep  rooted  in 
the  nature  of  the  human  spirit,  and  hence  also  a  social 
force,  a  power  capable  of  moulding  thought,  influenc- 
ing action,  affecting  the  general  course  of  man's  de- 
velopment, and  serving  providential  ends.  Hence  it 
is  only  by  the  unreflecting  that  it  will  be  contemptu- 
ously, impatiently,  or  wrathfully  treated;  from  oth- 
ers who  feel  called  to  deal  with  it,  even  on  the  whole 

81 


HISTORY  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

unfavourably,  it  will  receive  careful  and  respectful 
consideration. 

Throughout  the  present  work  it  will  be  constantly 
necessary  to  refer  to  historical  forms  of  agnosticism 
— to  the  views  and  tenets  of  individual  agnostics  or 
of  particular  agnostic  schools.  To  discuss  the  sub- 
ject of  it  in  a  merely  indefinite  and  general  way  would 
be  useless  and  unjust.  Agnosticism  is  so  vague  and 
variable  that  to  attempt  to  reason  on  it  in  itself,  apart 
from  its  actual  manifestations,  must  be  futile.  It 
now  seems  requisite,  therefore,  to  cast  a  rapid  glance 
over  the  history  of  agnosticism,  to  note  its  chief 
stages,  and  to  name  or  characterise  the  more  famous 
of  its  representatives.  Even  a  mere  outline  of  the 
kind  will  be  better  than  none.  It  must  help  the 
reader  to  form  a  fairly  adequate  idea  of  what  agnosti- 
cism is  as  here  understood ;  let  him  know  who  its  chief 
advocates  have  been,  so  that  he  may  make  himself 
acquainted  with  their  pleadings  if  so  inclined ;  and 
indicate  to  him  what  was  the  place  occupied  in  agnos- 
tic history  by  those  agnostic  theorists  whose  views  he 
finds  subjected  in  our  pages  to  special  criticism. 

While  agnosticism  is  old,  it  is  far  from  as  old  aS 
thought,  or  even  as  old  as  either  religion  or  philoso- 
phy. Man  is  naturally  less  critical  or  sceptical  than 
imaginative  and  credulous.  He  readily  satisfies  his 
curiosity  with  conjectures,  and  is  apt  to  believe  what- 
ever he  is  told.  The  lower  religions  manifest  the 
extraordinary  credulity  of  those  who  accept  them.  It 
is  only  at  a  comparatively  advanced  stage  that  relig- 
ious beliefs  are  seriously  tested  with  reference  to 

82 


EARLIEST   PHILOSOPHIES 

their  truth  or  falsehood.  Before  there  arises  an  earn- 
est demand  for  rationality  and  evidence  there  must 
be  the  felt  want  of  them  which  springs  from  doubt: 
hence  the  spiritual  necessity,  the  religious  impor- 
tance, of  doubt  in  beings  so  constituted  and  circum- 
stanced as  men  are. 

The  oldest  historical  forms  of  philosophy  similarly 
exhibit  the  most  evident  marks  of  having  originated 
in  a  reason  too  easily  satisfied  and  overweeningly  con- 
fident in  its  own  strength.  "  Had  men,"  says  Comte, 
"  not  begun  by  an  exaggerated  estimate  of  what  they 
could  do,  they  would  never  have  done  all  they  were  ca- 
pable of.  It  has  to  be  added  that  their  pride  was  chief- 
ly due  to  their  inevitable  ignorance — their  excessive 
confidence  to  their  defective  experience.  If  they  had 
been  critical  or  sceptical — if  they  had  clearly  seen 
how  difiicult  were  the  problems  with  which  they  pro- 
posed to  deal  and  how  inadequate  for  their  solution 
were  the  means  at  their  disposal — they  would  certain- 
ly never  have  beg-un  to  philosophise  at  all;  but  this 
they  could  not  be,  could  not  see,  the  humility  and  the 
knowledge  which  it  implied  being  only  attainable 
through  the  experience  acquired  in  the  course  of  con- 
tinuous philosophising  itself.  They  began  in  the 
only  way  in  which  they  could  begin  with  such  knowl- 
edge and  methods  as  they  possessed. 

The  earliest  philosophies  were  those  which  most 
boldly  undertook  to  explain  mysteries  the  most  pro- 
found and  to  grapple  with  questions  the  most  inacces- 
sible; and  it  was  through  this  boldness  that  they 
came  into  conflict  with  contemporaneous  religions. 

83 


HISTOEY   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

They  had  the  courage  to  assail  and  the  ambition  to 
seek  to  supply  the  place  of  these  religions.  Hence 
intellectual  struggles  which  led  to  doubts  of  the  truth 
both  of  religion  and  of  philosophy.  This  result  was,  of 
course,  sooner  reached  where  philosophy  started,  as 
in  Greece,  from  an  independent  rational  basis,  than 
where,  as  in  India,  it  grew  directly  out  of  religion. 

The  conflicts  and  contradictions  of  philosophical 
systems,  all  largely  at  variance  with  experience,  great- 
ly contributed  to  the  rise  of  scepticism.  Indeed,  it 
was  only  when  philosophical  systems  of  the  too  vent- 
uresome and  speculative  type  had  discredited  one  an- 
other that  doubt  or  disbelief  of  a  properly  sceptical 
or  agnostic  nature  could  arise.  Doubt  and  disbelief 
are  only  sceptical  or  agnostic  when  they  attempt  to 
justify  themselves  by  a  distinctive  kind  of  philosophic 
theorising. 

The  history  of  agnosticism  has  been  divided  into 
three  periods — the  Oriental,  the  Classical,  and  the 
Modern.  The  division  is  a  convenient  one ;  but  the 
first  period  was  only  of  a  rudimentary  character.  It 
presents  us  merely  with  approximations  to  agnosti- 
cism, not  with  distinct  forms  of  it.  Palestine,  China, 
and  India  are  the  oriental  lands  in  which  the  closest 
approximations  of  the  kind  appeared.  So  far  as  has 
yet  been  shown,  the  question.  What  are  the  limits  of 
human  knowledge  ?  was  not  specially  discussed,  or 
even  distinctly  raised,  by  any  ancient  Egyptian,  Chal- 
dean, or  Persian  sage,  deeply  impressed  although 
many  of  them  cannot  fail  to  have  been  with  the  little- 
ness of  their  own  knowledge  and  the  uncertainty  of 

84 


HEBREW   SCEPTICISM 

much  which  passed  among  their  contemporaries  as 
knowledge. 

The  Ilehrews  had  no  philosophy,  and  consequently 
no  philosophical  scepticism,  no  scepticism  in  the  sense 
of  agnosticism ;  but  in  the  post-exilian  period  of  their 
history  scepticism  in  a  more  general  sense — a  scepti- 
cism of  a  spiritual  and  practical,  not  speculative  and 
theoretical  kind,  which  expressed  itself  in  the  most 
earnest  questionings  and  gravest  doubts  as  to  the  rela- 
tion of  sin  and  suffering  and  the  consistency  of  the 
facts  of  life  with  Divine  goodness  and  justice — was 
far  from  unknown  among  them.     Their  dim  and  du- 
bious views  of  a  future  existence  caused  suffering  virt- 
ue and  prosperous  wickedness  to  be  j:)eculiarly  inex- 
plicable and  harassing  facts  even  to  the  most  pious 
among  them.     These  facts  gave  rise  to  almost  all  that 
can  be  called  even  in  popular  language  scepticism  in 
the  Bible, — such  scepticism  as  found  utterance  for 
itself  in  Psalms  Ixxiii.,  Ixxxviii.,  and  Ixxxix.,  in  sun- 
dry sentences  of  Jeremiah,  Ezekiel,  and  Malachi,  and 
in  the  Books  of  Job  and  Ecclesiastes.   In  the  Book  of 
Job  all  the  theories  of  providence  and  retribution  cur- 
rent among  the  Hebrews  are  seriously  examined  and 
their  weaknesses  boldly  exposed.  Ecclesiastes  (Kohe- 
leth)  is  more  pessimistic  than  sceptical,  but  its  pes- 
simism springs  from  a  keen  sense  of  the  feebleness 
and  fallibility  of  human  reason  and  of  the  complex- 
ity, mysteriousness,  and  apparent  confusion  and  plan- 
lessness  of  nature  and  history.     "  The  Preacher  " 
perceives  in  all  spheres  of  existence,  in  all  apparent 
good,  in  all  human  aims  and  efforts,  self-contradicto- 

85 


HISTORY  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

riness,  deceptiveness,  friiitlessness,  and,  in  a  word, 
proofs  and  illustrations  of  his  text, — "  Vanity  of 
vanities,  all  is  vanity." 

Chinese  scepticism  as  found  in  Confucianism 
somewhat  resembles  that  of  modern  Positivism,  be- 
ing what  is  negative  in  a  system  of  ethical  naturalism  ; 
in  Taoism  it  is  a  denial  of  the  possibility  of  knowing 
an  Absolute  Personal  Cause;  and  in  Fohism  it  has 
the  character  proper  to  Buddhism.  So  far  as  it  pre- 
sents itself  in  what  the  Chinese  regard  as  their  classi- 
cal writings,  it  cannot  be  properly  described,  I  think, 
as  agnostic. 

Even  in  India  agnosticism  did  not  attain  to  a  dis- 
tinct and  separate  form  of  existence,  but  grew  out  of 
the  dogmatic  idealisms  which  sprang  up  in  that  land 
and  remained  always  dependent  on  them.  It  is  in 
the  writings  of  the  Vedanta  school  of  philosophy  that 
it  is  most  conspicuous;  and  the  Vedanta  philosophy 
is  the  most  developed  and  influential  of  the  Hindu 
philosophies.  It  rests  on  the  idea  that  there  is  but 
one_  existence,  the  universal  soul ;  and  to  defend  this 
assumption  it  has  to  maintain  that  all  the  objects  of 
the  material  world  and  all  separate  souls  are  illusions 
produced  by  ignorance  or  false  conceptions:  in  other 
words,  it  is  a  pantheism  which  issues  in  acosmism, 
and  makes  use  of  a  partial  agnosticism  to  protect  and 
justify  itself.  All  that  the  great  majority  of  modern 
agnostics  accept  as  the  only  region  within  which 
knowledge  is  attainable,  Vedantists  consider  to  be  en- 
tirely the  territory  of  ignorance.  A  follower  of  Vyasa 
and  Sankara  can  only  view  the  exactest  observations 

86 


I 


AGNOSTICISM  IN^VEDANTISM 

of  modern  science  as  false  conceptions,  and  the  discov- 
eries of  which  it  is  proudest  as  vain  illusions. 

Buddhism  in  its  original  form  was  more  imbued 
with  the  agnostic  spirit  than  any  other  religion  has 
been.  It  recognised  and  appreciated  only  a  kind  of 
knowledge  which  involved  the  negation  and  repudia- 
tion of  all  other  knowledge.  It  virtually  identified 
true  knowledge  with  what  it  inculcated  as  saving 
faith.  Right  beliefs,  according  to  Buddha,  were  just 
right  views, — those  which  when  truly  appropriated 
through  the  personal  effort  and  contemplation  of  the 
believer  naturally  led  to  right  words,  right  feelings, 
right  acts,  right  dispositions,  and  all  else  that  is  right, 
and  so  led  to  the  chief  good, — deliverance  from  all 
that  is  temporal  and  phenomenal,  from  birth  and 
death,  desire  and  pain,  individuality,  consciousness, 
and  change.  Its  pessimistic  conception  of  life  was 
conjoined  with  the  agnostic  conviction  that  insight 
into  the  nothingness  of  existence  is  the  absolute  truth, 
the  sum  of  truth,  and  that  ordinary  knowledge  and 
so-called  science  are  a  portion  of  the  burden  of  false- 
hood and  vanity  from  which  deliverance  is  to  be 
gained  by  following  the  "  noble  path  "  revealed  by 
Buddha.  While  identifying  faith  and  knowledge 
Buddhism  assigned  to  both  a  singularly  contracted 
sphere ;  while  a  severe  ethical  rationalism  it  was  ag- 
nostic and  pessimistic  in  its  attitude  towards  all  that 
constitutes  and  characterises  existence  and  life.  This 
view  of  Buddhism,  it  must  be  observed,  is  meant  to 
apply  only  to  its  original  and  philosophical  form, — 
one  widely  different  in  various  respects  from  modern 

87 


HISTOEY  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

German  agnostic  pessimism,  yet  almost  certainly 
more  like  to  it  than  to  the  modern  Buddhistic  relig- 
ions of  the  East.  With  the  myths  and  legends,  fic- 
tions and  dogmas  of  the  latter,  the  historian  of  agnos- 
ticism has  no  concern.^ 


II.  GRECO-EOMAN  AGNOSTICISM.       PRE-SOCEATIO 
OE  PEELIMINAEY  PERIOD 

We  now  pass  to  the  Greek  or  Greco-Roman  period 
of  agnostic  history.  The  agnosticism  of  this  period 
was  almost  entirely  a  product  of  the  Greek  intellect, 
an  outgrowth  of  Greek  philosophy,  although  the  prin- 
ciples and  conclusions  of  it  came  to  be  known  and  to 
have  their  influence  felt  throughout  the  Roman  world. 
It  owed  its  being  and  form,  its  ingenuity,  thorough- 

'  Owen  treats  of  Hebrew,  Hindu,  and  Buddhist  scepticism  in 
Evenings  with  the  Skeptics,  vol.  i.  pp.  367-450.  In  connection  with 
a  sketch  like  the  present  it  would  be  inappropriate,  I  think,  to  give 
references  to  the  literature  regarding  so-called  Chinese,  Hindu,  or 
Buddhist  scepticism.  As  to  so-called  "  Hebrew  Scepticism,"  it  may 
suffice  to  mention  the  following  English  works :  (1)  Wright,  Book 
of  Koheleth  (Donellan  Lecture,  1883) ;  (2)  Cheyne,  Job  and  Solo- 
mon, 1887;  (3)  Plumptre,  Ecclesiastes  (Camb.  Bib.  Series),  181)2; 
(4)  A.  B.  Davidson,  The  Book  of  Job  (C.B.S.),  1893;  (5)  Momerie, 
Agnosticism  (Part  II.  Ecclesiastes),  4th  ed. ;  (6)  Wenley,  Aspects 
of  Pessimism  (Jewish  Pessimism,  pp.  1-50),  1894;  (7)  Dillon,  The 
Sceptics  of  the  Old  Testament,  1895.  The  reason  why  Dr.  Dillon 
pronounces  "Job,"  "Koheleth,"  and  "  Agur"  to  be  "sceptics"  is 
that  "  all  three  reject  the  dogma  of  retribution,  the  doctrine  of  eternal 
life,  and  belief  in  the  coming  of  a  Messiah,  over  and  above  which 
they  at  times  strip  the  notion  of  God  of  its  most  essential  attributes, 
reducing  it  to  the  shadow  of  a  mere  intellectual  abstraction  "  (p.  10). 
The  word  "reject"  is  too  strong;  and  even  mere  reyediow,  however 
explicit,  of  the  "dogma,"  "doctrine,"  and  "belief"  mentioned 
would  not  be  scepticism  in  the  special  sense  of  the  term, 

88 


PRE-SOCKATIC   PHILOSOPHY 

ness,  and  comprehensiveness,  to  the  love  of  inquiry 
and  the  speculative  qualities  of  the  Grecian  mind, 
although  a  long  course  of  historical  preparation  and 
a  variety  of  occasional  causes  concurred  with  these  to 
secure  and  perfect  its  solution.  Its  history  may  be 
divided  into  Pre-Socratic  or  Preliminary  and  Post- 
Socratic  or  Developed.  It  is  a  history  which  has  been 
the  subject  of  an  immense  amount  of  disquisition  and 
research. 

In  Greece,  as  everywhere  else,  agnosticism  was  pre- 
ceded by  dogmatism.  The  earliest  Greek  philosophers 
were  cosmologists.  They  began  with  external  nature ; 
sought  to  find  out  what  was  the  primary  substance  of 
the  world ;  and  tried  to  explain  how  the  world  came 
to  attain  its  present  condition  and  contents.  Their 
aim  was  not  only  legitimate  but  grand,  and  their  ef- 
forts to  attain  it  proved  wonderfully  inspiring.  But 
their  own  systems  were  necessarily  crude  and  conject- 
ural, discordant  and  contradictory.  Hence  although 
they  were  neither  agnostic  in  themselves  nor  directly 
tended  to  agnosticism,  they  indirectly  led  to  it  both  by 
their  one-sidedneas  and  by  their  conflicting  findings. 
The  immediate  successors  of  these  philosophers  were 
forced  to  be  more  critical,  and  especially  compelled  to 
inquire  how  appearance  and  reality  are  to  be  distin- 
guished and  how  they  are  related.  This,  in  turn, 
raised  the  question  how  knowledge  and  opinion  differ, 
if  they  differ.  A  most  formidable  question !  It 
could  not  be  got  rid  of;  the  adherents  of  all  systems 
felt  vitally  interested  in  finding  an  answer  to  it ;  yet 
no  one  did  answer  it  in  a  way  which  commanded  gen- 

89 


HISTORY   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

eral  assent.  Hence  a  sense  of  the  difficulty  of  deter- 
mining the  true  sphere  of  knowledge  increasingly 
deepened  and  spread  among  Greek  thinkers.  Hence 
also  the  later  Pre-Socratic  systems  of  Greek  philoso- 
phy mostly  tended  directly  to  generate  agnosticism. 

Greek  Eleatic  philosophy  involved  agnosticism  in 
the  same  way  that  Hindu  Vedantic  philosophy  did 
so.  Its  doctrine  of  unity  implied  the  impossibility 
of  plurality  and  change,  the  unreality  of  space  and 
time  and  motion,  the  non-existence  of  material  ob- 
jects,  and  the  delusiveness  of  the  senses.  All  these 
conclusions  Parmenides  actually  deduced  from  it  and 
expressly  inculcated.  And  one  of  his  disciples,  Zeno 
of  Elea,  argued  so  ingeniously  against  the  possibility 
of  plurality  and  motion,. that  although  many  of  the 
ablest  logicians  from  Aristotle  to  the  present  day  have 
undertaken  to  show  the  fallaciousness  of  his  reason- 
ings, there  is  even  yet  no  general  agreement  as  to 
wherein  their  fallaciousness  lies,  and  not  a  few  of 
those  who  have  treated  of  them  have  come  to  the  con- 
clusion that  they  cannot  be  answered.  Sir  William 
Hamilton,  for  example,  says  "  that  they  at  least  show 
that  the  possibility  of  motion,  however  certain  as  a 
fact,  cannot  be  conceived  possible,  as  it  involves  a 
contradiction."  ^  If  they  really  proved  that,  they 
must  also,  it  seems  to  me,  have  proved  that  mo- 
tion itself  is  neither  possible  nor  certain.  But  that 
Sir  William  Hamilton  could  imagine  them  to  have  ir- 
refutably proved  so  much  may  help  us  to  realise  what 
a  great  advance  towards  scepticism  proper  Zeno  must 
'  Lectures  on  Metaphysics^  vol.  ii.  p.  373. 
90 


THE   SOPHISTS  AND   AGNOSTICISM 

have  made.  The  Eleatic  philosophy,  like  the  Ve- 
dantist  philosophy,  clearly  shows  that  such  scepti- 
cism is  not  exclusively  dependent,  as  Saisset  and  oth- 
ers have  affirmed,  on  sensualism;  it  may  spring  as 
directly  and  necessarily  from  idealism  and  ontolo- 
gism. 

The  Heraclitean  philosophy  was  essentially  antag- 
onistic to  the  Eleatic,  but  not  less  exclusive  or  less 
favourable  to  scepticism.  What  it  recognised  every- 
where was  not  being  but  becoming,  not  unity  but  plu- 
rality, not  immobility  but  ceaseless  motion.  It  de- 
nied what  Eleaticism  affirmed,  and  affirmed  what  it 
denied ;  but  it  denied  as  much ;  its  negations  and 
doubts  were  as  fundamental  and  comprehensive, 
^nesidemus,  one  of  the  most  renowned  of  the  Greek 
sceptics,  is  reported  to  have  attached  himself  to  the 
Heraclitean  system  in  his  later  years ;  and  this  might 
well  be,  as  the  Heraclitean  tenets  of  a  perpetual  flux, 
and  of  a  self-contradictoriness  inherent  alike  in  all 
things  and  in  all  thoughts,  are  thoroughly  sceptical. 

Some  students  of  Greek  scepticism  consider  that  the 
materialistic  philosophy  propounded  by  Democritus 
exerted  an  even  greater  influence  in  its  formation  and 
development  than  either  the  Eleatic  or  the  Heracli- 
tean. It  may  have  been  so ;  but  it  is  enough  here  to  say 
merely  that  its  influence  on  them  was  undoubtedly 
very  great.  When  a  professed  materialist  like  De- 
mocritus, who  explained  all  things  by  the  intercon- 
nection and  interaction  of  physical  atoms,  also  taught 
that  the  senses  are  incapable  of  apprehending  truth, 
and  that  nothing  is  known  of  reality,  the  true  nature 

91 


HISTORY  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

even  of  empirical  objects,  he  did  more  to  discredit 
sensuous  knowledge  at  least  than  those  who  endeav- 
oured to  theorise  with  less  reference  to  it.  lie  has 
been  ranked  both  among  the  sophists  and  among  the 
sceptics  of  Greece,  erroneously  indeed  but  not  inex- 
plicably ;  and  it  is  certain  that  alike  the  sophist  Pro- 
tagoras and  the  sceptic  ^Enesidemus  were  largely  his 
disciples. 

The  last  stage  of  Greek  Pre-Socratic  philosophy 
was  that  which  is  known  as  the  age  of  the  sophists. 
It  was  an  age  of  great  and  varied  intellectual  and 
practical  activity ;  an  age  of  high  culture,  of  famous 
men,  and  of  brilliant  achievements  in  policy,  Avar, 
and  art;  but  also  an  age  in  which  the  Greeks  had 
grown  dissatisfied  with  tradition  and  authority  in 
matters  of  morals  and  religion,  and  had  likewise  lost 
confidence  in  the  power  of  reason  and  of  philosophy 
to  replace  them  and  to  supply  their  defects ;  in  which 
self-interest,  vanity,  and  ambition  were  the  ruling 
motives  of  action,  while  self-sacrifice  and  the  pure 
love  of  virtue  were  rare ;  and  in  which  the  clever  ad- 
vocacy of  a  bad  cause  was  more  admired  than  the  most 
honest  truth-search.  It  was  natural  that  the  sophists 
should  appear  and  flourish  in  such  an  age.  They  ex- 
emplified instead  of  opjwsing  its  predominant  evil 
tendencies.  They  ministered  to  some  of  its  real  wants 
and  rendered  considerable  services  to  learning  and 
culture.  Their  want  of  faith,  however,  in  any  abso- 
lute truth  or  goodness  made  them  all  the  readier  and 
abler  to  supply  reasons  for  or  against  any  opinion 
whatever. 

92 


SOPHISTS  AND   SCEPTICS 

Were  the  sophists  sceptics  proper,  genuine  agnos- 
tics ?  Certainly  not  in  so  far  as  they  were  insincere 
and  dishonest  in  their  professions  of  doubt  or  unbe- 
lief. 'No  real  sceptic  should  be  identified  with  a 
sophist  in  the  discreditable  sense  acquired  by  the 
term.  The  sophist  is  a  man  who  does  not  care  for 
truth,  and  so  is  ready  to  argue  either  for  or  against 
any  thesis  or  cause.  The  sceptic  really  doubts  or  dis- 
believes the  possibility  of  attaining  truth,  and  argues 
on  behalf  of  such  doubt  or  disbelief.  But  the  Greek 
sophists  Avere  manifestly  the  precursors  of  the  Greek 
sceptics.  They  so  combated  the  conclusions  of  each 
school  of  philosophy  by  the  arguments  of  another  as  to 
produce  the  impression  that  all  philosophy  was  a  de- 
ception ;  so  exaggerated  the  relativity  alike  of  sense 
and  of  thought  as  to  leave  no  room  for  a  reasonable 
trust  in  the  certainty  of  any  kind  of  knowledge.  They 
appropriated  and  popularised  whatever  was  sceptical 
in  the  teaching  of  the  earlier  philosophers,  and  em- 
ployed all  that  was  favourable  to  scepticism  in  their 
logical  methods.  Further,  some  of  the  Greek  soph- 
ists seem  to  have  been  almost,  if  not  altogether,  indis- 
tinguishable from  real  sceptics.  A  Protagoras  and 
a  Gorgias,  for  example,  appear  to  have  been  about  as 
thoroughly  agnostic  as  human  nature  has  allowed 
almost  any  human  beings  to  be.  There  is  not  suf- 
ficient evidence  to  prove  them  to  have  been  insincere ; 
and  it  is  difficult  to  see  that  the  respects  in  which  their 
teaching  diflfered  from  that  of  the  Pyrrhonian,  Aca- 
demic, or  Empiricist  sceptics  ought  to  prevent  us 
from  regarding  it  as  truly  sceptical. 

93 


HISTORY  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

There  are  times  when  philosophy  appears  to  die, 
and  to  rise  again  out  of  its  own  ashes.  Its  epochs  of 
renascence  have  been  generally  preceded  by  a  wide 
diffusion  of  indifterentism  and  of  scepticism.  The 
mind  cannot  rest  in  doubt,  and  so  is  impelled  by  its 
pressure  to  seek  the  more  earnestly  for  certitude.  It 
perceives  that  the  deepest  doubts  do  not  disprove  the 
existence  of  truth,  but  merely  the  depth  of  the  well 
in  which  it  is  contained.  Hence  there  appeared  amidst 
the  sophists  a  Socrates  to  inaugurate  a  new  era  of 
philosophy,  in  which  almost  all  the  great  questions 
with  which  human  thought  has  since  been  occupied 
were  to  be  raised  and  discussed  in  a  way  which  has 
profoundly  influenced  the  spirit  and  life  of  mankind. 
Plato  followed  up  the  movement  with  wonderful  gen- 
ius and  effectiveness.  Aristotle  made  the  first  and 
perhaps  the  most  remarkable  of  attempts  to  elaborate 
a  universal  system  of  science  on  philosophical  prin- 
ciples. Various  schools  of  philosophy  arose,  the  dis- 
ciples of  which  actively  and  successfully  propagated 
their  respective  tenets  as  to  God,  nature,  man,  the 
laws  of  reason  and  of  morals,  the  chief  good  and  how 
to  attain  it.  But  there  were  few  subjects  on  which 
general  agreement  of  opinion  was  reached ;  the  new 
philosophies  proved  as  discordant  and  conflicting  as 
those  which  preceded  them  had  been ;  and  so  scepti- 
cism reappeared,  and  at  length  assumed  its  proper  or 
strictly  agnostic  form. 


94 


PYRRHONISM 

III.    POST-SOCRATIC    OR    DEVELOPED    PERIOD 

Pyrrho  of  Elis,  a  contemporary  of  Alexander  the 
Great  and  of  Aristotle,  is  generally  regarded  as  the 
founder  of  Greek  theoretical  scepticism.  From  him 
Pyrrhonism  became  the  ordinary  Greek,  medieval, 
and  even,  until  the  close  of  last  century,  modern  des- 
ignation for  such  scepticism.  He  left  no  written  ex- 
position of  his  views,  but  his  disciple  Timon  of  Phlius 
transmitted  to  the  world  what  little  is  known  of  them. 
The  deep  impression  which  Pyrrho  made  by  main- 
taining them  is  only  explicable  by  their  having  been 
clearly  thought  out  and  ingeniously  defended.  His 
philosophy  centred  in  the  belief  that  nothing  can  be 
known,  and  that  nothing  should  be  either  affirmed  or 
denied,  regarding  the  natures  of  things,  not  even 
whether  they  exist  or  not.  It  was  one  not  of  the  nega- 
tion of  a  knowledge  of  things  but  simply  of  doubt ;  it 
was  one,  however,  of  complete  doubt,  of  entire  sus- 
pense of  judgment,  as  to  what  things  are  or  whether 
things  are  or  are  not.  It  did  not,  of  course,  exclude 
assent  to  phenomena  or  appearances  considered  mere- 
ly as  states  of  consciousness.  Among  immediate  disci- 
ples of  Pyrrho  were,  in  addition  to  Timon,  Eurylo- 
chus,  Pliilo  of  Athens,  iSTausiphanes,  and  IIecata?us  of 
Abdera ;  and  among  immediate  disciples  of  Timon, 
Dioscurides  of  Cyprus,  Xicolochus  of  Rhodes,  Uphre- 
nor  of  Seleucus,  Praylus,  and  Xanthus. 

Arcesilaos  (b.c.  316-240)  introduced  into  the  Pla- 
tonic school  a  scepticism  closely  akin  to  that  of  Pyr- 
rho, and  thereby  founded  the  so-called  Second  or  Mid- 
95 


HISTOEY   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

die  Academy.  He  not  only  began,  as  Socrates  and 
Plato  had  done,  with  doubt,  but  ended  with  it, 
which  they  did  not.  The  starting-point  of  his  scep- 
ticism seems  to  have  been  opposition  to  the  Stoic 
view  of  the  criterion  of  truth ;  but  he  was  led  on  to 
deny  that  there  could  be  any  criterion  of  truth,  or  any 
certitude.  Like  Pyrrho,  he  doubted  the  possibility  of 
knowledge,  and  inculcated  as  to  all  that  pretended  to 
be  knowledge  a  total  suspension  of  judgment.  He 
said  "  he  knew  nothing  absolutely,  not  even  that  he 
knew  nothing."  He  felt,  however,  that  his  agnosti- 
cism required  mitigation  so  far  as  ordinary  life  was 
concerned ;  that  a  distinction  must  be  drawn  between 
speculation  and  practice,  and  that,  whatever  be  the 
conclusions  of  the  former,  grounds  must  be  found 
for  satisfying  the  claims  of  the  latter.  Hence  while 
holding  that  we  cannot  truly  know  aught  about  the 
natures  of  things,  he  argued  that  we  are  not  thereby 
reduced  either  to  entire  or  to  irrational  activity,  see- 
ing that  among  the  apparent  grounds  for  choosing  and 
rejecting  actions  or  courses  of  action  there  is  enough 
of  difference  to  enable  us  to  rule  our  choices  and  re- 
fusals and  our  conduct  generally  in  a  wise  and  pru- 
dent way, — or,  so  as  to  act  rightly  and  be  happy. 
What  he  thus  regarded  as  the  guide  of  life  he  called 
the  reasonable  {to  evXoyov),  which  has  been  generally 
identified  with  the  probable  {to  triOavov)  of  Carne- 
ades.  That  they  were  not  identical  seems  to  have 
been  satisfactorily  proved  by  Hirzel ;  but  we  may, 
])erhaps,  still  regard  Arcesilaos  as  the  originator  of 
the    doctrine    of    probabilism.     The    reasonableness 

96 


CARNEADES 

which  he  accepted  while  denying  knowledge  and  cer- 
tainty necessarily  implied  that  probability  was  the 
guide  of  life. 

Arcesilaos  was  succeeded  in  the  direction  of  his 
school  by  Lacydes,  Lacydes  by  Evander,  Evander  by 
Hegesinus,  and  Ilegesinus  by  Carneades.  Of  the 
first  three  we  know  almost  nothing  except  the  names 
and  the  names  of  some  of  their  disciples.  But  it  is 
far  otherwise  as  regards  the  fourth.  He  was  not  only 
the  most  distinguished  successor  of  Arcesilaos,  but 
himself  a  still  more  remarkable  and  celebrated  man ; 
and  Cicero  and  Sextus  Empiricus  have  made  us  fairly 
acquainted  witli  his  opinions. 

Carneades  possessed  talents  of  a  high  order,  a  mind 
of  amazing  vigour  and  versatility.  He  was  a  great 
orator,  a  consummate  dialectician,  a  singularly  in- 
genious and  subtle  critic,  and  almost  irresistible  in 
debate.  We  have  no  reason  to  suppose  that  his  gen- 
ius was  unfitted  for  the  work  of  construction,  but  it 
was  specially  fitted  for  the  word  of  destruction,  and 
into  that  he  threw  himself  with  all  the  energy  and 
ardour  of  his  strong  and  vehement  nature.  N^eces- 
sarily  the  incessant  assaults  of  such  a  man  on  the 
dogmatic  systems  and  tendencies  of  his  time  greatly 
influenced  the  minds  of  his  contemporaries,  and  even 
those  of  subsequent  thinkers. 

Carneades  endeavoured  to  confirm  and  develop  the 
doctrine  of  Arcesilaos  as  to  the  criterion  of  evidence. 
He  assailed  the  various  hypotheses  maintained  by  the 
dogmatists  of  his  day  on  that  subject,  and  laboured  to 
prove  that  neither  sense  nor  reason  supplies  any  sure 

97 


HISTOEY   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

sign  of  truth,  any  reliable  test  by  which  we  can  cer- 
tainly distinguish  between  the  semblance  and  the  real- 
ity of  knowledge. 

He  Avas,  it  must  be  further  noted,  one  of  the  few 
Greek  sceptics  known  to  have  occupied  themselves 
specially  with  investigation  into  the  grounds  of  relig- 
ion. He  subjected  them  to  a  serious  criticism,  and  one 
not  unsuccessful  in  so  far  as  it  dealt  with  Stoic  and 
Epicurean  opinions.  He  attempted  to  refute  the  ar- 
gument in  favour  of  religion  drawn  from  its  univer- 
sality, and  entirely  rejected  the  theory  of  final  causes. 
He  sought  to  show  that  the  idea  of  God  is  a  self -con- 
tradictory one,  seeing  that  God  can  only  be  believed 
in  as  a  moral  being,  yet  cannot  be  conceived  of  as  such, 
since  morality  implies  imperfection  overcome,  and 
cannot  be  thought  of  as  either  finite  or  infinite,  al- 
though He  must  be  either  the  one  or  the  other.  The 
most  important  portion  of  his  theological  argumenta- 
tion was  his  adverse  criticism  of  the  doctrine  of 
providence.  It  contained  almost  all  the  weightier 
of  the  objections  which  have  since  been  urged 
against  it. 

Carneades  greatly  developed  the  doctrine  of  proba- 
bilism.  Wliile  denying  the  possibility  of  attaining 
to  certainty,  he  maintained  that  a  measure  of  proba- 
bility may  be  reached  sufficient  for  the  regulation  of 
practical  life.  The  source  of  such  probability,  he  ar- 
gued, could  not  be  in  the  object,  for  that  is  unknown ; 
but  must  be  in  the  subject,  the  mind  which  thinks  it 
knows.  According  as  the  mind  is  more  or  less  viv- 
idly impressed,  or  apprehends  appearances  as  accord- 

98 


HIS   DOCTKINE   OF   PR0BABIL18M 

ant  or  discordant,  as  permanent  or  evanescent,  it  will 
naturally  and  reasonably  place  more  or  less  trust  in 
its  sensations  and  perceptions — in  other  words,  will 
regard  them  as  more  or  less  probable,  and  will  act  on 
them  with  more  or  less  confidence.  Carneades  seems 
to  have  been  the  first  to  endeavour  to  determine  what 
were  the  conditions  and  degrees  of  probability.  He 
represented  the  degrees  as  corresponding  to  the  condi- 
tions, the  lowest  degree  being  that  in  which  only  a 
single  condition  is  fulfilled,  and  the  highest  that  in 
which  all  the  conditions  are  fulfilled.  The  highest 
degree  of  probability  is  the  best  attainable  criterion 
of  belief  and  the  best  attainable  rule  of  action.  Car- 
neades elaborated  his  doctrine  of  probability  in  order 
to  meet  objections  which  were  waged  against  his  de- 
nial of  certainty,  and  so  to  give  plausibility  to  his 
scepticism.*  He  rendered  by  it,  however,  good  ser- 
vice to  philosophy.  The  subject  of  probability  is  a 
very  important  one  both  in  logic  and  in  ethics.  The 
scepticism  of  Carneades  lay  in  his  teaching  regard- 
ing certainty,  not  in  his  teaching  regarding  probabil- 
ity. 

His  successors,  Clitomachus,  Charmidas,  and  Philo 
of  Larissa,  were  much  inferior  to  him,  and  carried  on 
the  war  against  dogmatism  in  a  languid  and  ineffec- 
tive way.  With  Antiochus  of  Askelon  scepticism  even 
ceased  to  be  dominant  in  the  teaching  gf  the  Acad- 
emy, and  became  subordinate  to  eclecticism.  Dog- 
matism in  the  form  of  Stoicism  acquired  ascendency 
in  the  Greco-Roman  world.  But  its  triumph  was  not 
complete.     It  even  gave  rise  to  a  revival  of  Pyrrhon- 

99 


HISTORY  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

ism, — to  an  attempt  to  develop  a  decided  and  thor- 
oughly consistent  scepticism. 

iEnesidemus  of  Cnossns,  a  man  of  very  acute  and 
subtle  intellect,  was  the  originator  of  the  movement, 
and  so  is  known  as  the  founder  of  the  New  Sceptical 
School.  There  is  great  difference  of  opinion  as  to 
the  time  at  which  he  lived.  The  best  supported  view 
is,  I  think,  that  which  would  make  him  a  contempo- 
rary of  Cicero.     He  taught  at  Alexandria. 

^-Enesidemus  restated  and  defended  the  Pyrrhonic 
as  opposed  to  the  Academic  position.  He  maintained 
that  we  are  not  entitled  either  to  affirm  or  deny  any- 
thing regarding  things ;  that  we  have  no  right  to  do 
the  one  more  than  the  other ;  and  that  the  Academi- 
cians, when  they  pronounced  things  to  be  incompre- 
hensible, and  the  knowledge  of  them  to  be  unattaina- 
ble, erred  and  showed  themselves  to  be  not  genuine 
sceptics.  A  consistent  sceptic  can  affirm  nothing  as 
to  the  truth  of  which  he  is  always  in  search. 

Such  was  the  way  in  which  yEnesidemus  and  the 
neo-sceptics  distinguished  their  philosophical  point  of 
view  from  that  of  the  Academics.  And  the  validity 
of  the  distinction  has  been  generally  conceded.  To 
me  it  seems  null  or  deceptive.  The  philosophical 
standpoint  of  ^Encsidemus,  Agrippa,  and  Sextus  Em- 
piricus  was,  I  hold,  not  essentially  different  from  that 
of  such  Acaxlemicians  as  Arcesilaos  and  Carneades. 
The  sceptical  Academicians  affirmed  truth  to  be  in- 
comprehensible, knowledge  to  be  unattainable,  and 
thereby  exposed  themselves  to  the  charge  of  incon- 
sistency and  self-contradiction  brought  against  them 

100 


tEnesidemus  and  the  NEO-SCEPTICS 

both  by  the  dogmatists  and  the  neo-sceptics  of  their 
time, — the  charge  of  declaring  a  universal  proposi- 
tion to  be  true,  and  known  to  be  true,  the  subject  of 
which  they  nevertheless  asserted  to  be  incomprehensi- 
ble and  unknowable.  The  answer  which  they  gave  to 
it  was  that  they  did  not  know  even  that  they  knew 
nothing;  that  their  universal  proposition  itself  was 
not  to  be  taken  dogmatically,  not  as  real  and  certain, 
but  only  as  relative  and  problematic.  It  was  the  best 
answer  which  they  could  give,  yet  one  cannot  wonder 
that  it  failed  to  give  satisfaction  to  any  but  them- 
selves. Whether  their  general  assertion,  however,  was 
itself  consistent  or  not,  it  was  indispensable  as  a  justi- 
fication of  their  refusal  either  to  affirm  or  deny  the 
truth  of  any  particular  proposition  as  to  the  nature  of 
things.  And  it  was  as  indispensable  to  the  Pyrrhon- 
ists  as  to  themselves.  These  would-be  thorough  scep- 
tics professed  to  be  always  seekers,  on  the  ground 
that  they  never  found.  But  why  did  they  suppose 
that  they  never  found  ?  How  did  they  think  them- 
selves always  entitled  to  declare  that  truth,  if  it 
existed,  had  eluded  them  ?  Only  because,  in  their 
opinion,  there  were  no  means  of  finding  what  was 
sought,  no  reliable  organs  or  criteria  by  which  to  as- 
certain truth.  But  this  was  just  the  same  assump- 
tion to  which  the  sceptical  Academicians  gave  expres- 
sion. The  neo-sceptics  refrained  from  giving  it  ex- 
pression, but  they  constantly  implied  and  acted  on  it. 
They  were  less  explicit  than  the  Academicians,  and 
therefore  in  appearance  more  consistent,  but  not  more 
so  in  reality. 

101 


HISTORY  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

i3^nesidemus  very  considerably  improved  the  theory 
of  scepticism  by  chissifying  and  describing  the  va- 
rious ways  in  which  what  claims  to  be  truth  and  cer- 
tainty may  be  discredited  and  doubt  superinduced. 
He  was  the  first  to  arrange  the  arguments  on  behalf 
of  scepticism  under  the  heads  known  as  the  ten  tropes 
{jpoTTOi).  Although  he  originated  none  of  them,  he 
collected  and  grouped  them,  and  thereby  showed  the 
strength  of  the  case  for  scepticism  more  effectively 
than  had  previously  been  done.  His  arrangement  of 
them  cannot  be  justly  praised  as  clear  or  natural,  but 
even  such  as  it  was  it  marked  an  important  ad- 
vance. 

The  ten  tropes  corresponded  to  the  grounds  on 
which  they  were  based,  and  these  were  the  following : 
(1)  the  diversities  of  the  organisation  and  constitu- 
tion of  the  various  kinds  of  animals;  (2)  the  diversi- 
ties of  the  organisation  and  constitution  of  human  in- 
dividuals ;  ( 3 )  the  diversity  of  the  senses  even  in  the 
same  individual;  (4)  the  variableness  of  our  physical 
and  mental  conditions  and  circumstances  and  their 
effects  on  our  perceptions  and  judgments;  (5)  the 
influence  of  distance,  place,  and  position  on  the  ap- 
pearance of  objects;  (6)  the  way  in  which  our  views 
of  objects  are  affected  by  their  connections  with  oth- 
ers; (7)  the  extent  to  which  the  characters  of  things 
are  altered  by  changes  of  quantity  and  composition ; 
(8)  the  relativity  of  all  things  to  one  another  and  to 
their  percipient  subjects;  (9)  the  degree  to  which 
men's  notions  of  phenomena  are  dependent  on  their 
frequency  or  rarity;  and    (10)   the   divergences  of 

102 


^NESIDEMUS  AND   CAUSALITY 

moral  and  religious  belief  and  practice,  of  customs, 
laws,  rites,  institutions,  and  opinions,  among  different 
l^eoples.  These  tropes  show  that  ^nesidemus  chal- 
lenged the  credibility  of  all  our  immediate  percep- 
tions and  all  our  ordinary  judgments,  as  well  as  of  all 
the  philosophical  theories  which  rest  on  such  percep- 
tions and  judgments. 

His  criticism  of  the  notion  of  causation  must  not 
be  forgotten;  indeed,  it  was  the  most  original  and 
suggestive  portion  of  his  argumentation  against  the 
validity  of  human  knowledge.  By  it  he  remarkably 
anticipated  the  views  as  to  causality  reached  by  Hume 
and  Kant,  while  he  yet  strikingly  differed  from  both. 
He  denied  to  the  belief  in  causality  all  objective  legit- 
imacy, and  on  at  least  two  distinguishable  grounds. 
First,  the  belief  has  no  warrant  in  the  notion  of  cau- 
sality. The  notion  of  a  cause  is  a  relative  notion,  the 
notion  of  a  relation,  a  cause  not  being  conceivable 
without  that  which  it  causes.  But  no  relation  can  be 
shown  to  have  any  objective  legitimacy,  any  existence 
except  ill  thought.  Thought  relationships  belong,  or 
may  belong,  only  to  thought.  Further,  the  notion  of 
causality,  according  to  ^Enesidemus,  is  so  inherently 
perplexing  and  inconsistent  as  to  be  unworthy  of  cre- 
dence. It  involves  insuperable  difficulties.  A  cause 
cannot  be  rationally  thought  of  as  either  synchronous 
with,  antecedent  to,  or  consequent  on  its  alleged  effect. 
Not  as  synchronous  with  it,  for  then  cause  and  effect 
would  be  so  indistinguishable  that  each  might  as  well 
be  either  cause  or  effect  as  the  other ;  not  as  antecedent 
to  it,  for  nothing  can  be  the  cause  of  anything-  until 

103 


HISTORY   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

its  effect  exists ;  not  as  consequent  on  it,  for  what  pro- 
duces cannot  be  subsequent  to  what  is  produced. 

The  point  of  view  from  which  yEnesidemus  crit- 
icised belief  in  causality  seems  to  have  been  the  De- 
mocritean  or  Heraclitean — one  virtually  materialis- 
tic. What  his  criticism  showed  was  that  the  belief 
could  not  be  justified  from  that  standpoint.  Hume, 
starting  from  the  principles  of  sensationism  taught 
by  Locke,  deduced  from  them  scepticism  on  the 
strength  of  one  having  no  perception  of  the  connection 
of  cause  and  effect  in  the  external  world.  Kant  pro- 
fessed to  refute  Hume  by  arguing  that  causality. is  a 
condition,  and  a  necessary  condition,  of  thought. 
What  ^nesidemus  contended  was  that  as  causality 
could  not  be  shown  to  be  other  or  more  than  thought, 
pure  scepticism,  Pyrrhonism,  was  justified.  Ob- 
viously he  would  have  regarded  Kant's  attempted  an- 
swer to  Hume  as  not  a  refutation  but  a  confirmation 
of  scepticism. 

Of  his  immediate  successors  in  the  direction  of  the 
school  the  names  merely  are  known.  The  only  mem- 
ber of  it  recorded  to  have  made  any  considerable 
change  on  its  doctrine  was  Agrippa,  as  to  the  precise 
time  of  whose  teaching  there  is  much  uncertainty. 
For  the  ten  tropes  of  ^Enesidemus  he  substituted  five 
which  were  wider  and  deeper  in  their  range,  as  well 
as  more  closely  and  logically  connected,  one  naturally 
leading  up  and  lending  support  to  another  from  the 
first  to  the  last.  His  first  trope  he  described  as  rest- 
ing on  the  contrariety  of  opinions  the  truth  or  falsity 
of  which  there  are  no  satisfactory  means  of  determine 

104 


SEXTUS  EMPIEICUS 

ing;  the  second,  on  the  inevitable  necessity  of  prov- 
ing every  proof  ad  infinitum;  the  third,  on  the  rela- 
tivity of  all  objects  of  sense  and  intelligence ;  the 
fourth,  on  the  impossibility  of  carrying  on  any  in- 
vestigation or  demonstration  without  making  assump- 
tions which  themselves  need  to  be  established ;  and 
the  fifth,  the  trope  designated  o  hiaXKri\o<i,  on  the  en- 
deavour to  verify  sense  by  reason  and  reason  by  sense 
• — i.e.,  by  a  circular  or  alternative  process,  which  is 
fallacious,  inasmuch  as  the  truthfulness  of  both  sense 
and  reason  is  challenged  by  the  sceptic.  These  were, 
according  to  Agrippa,  the  species  or  means  of  produc- 
ing doubt  best  fitted  to  show  that  no  one  was  entitled 
to  deem  himself  certain  of  any  truth,  possessed  of  any 
indubitable  knowledge. 

Ancient  scepticism  had  Sextus,  surnamed  Empiri- 
cus  from  adhering  to  the  school  or  sect  of  physicians 
called  Empirical,  for  its  last  literary  representative 
and  expositor.  He  was  a  Greek  and  flourished  about 
A.D.  200.  It  is  not  known  where  he  was  born  or 
■where  he  taught.  It  has  been  conjectured  that  he 
lived  for  some  time  at  Athens,  at  Alexandria,  and  at 
Rome.  He  wrote  "  Medical  Memoirs,"  a  treatise 
"  On  the  Soul,"  and  perhaps  other  works,  which  have 
been  lost.  The  two  works  which  have  come  down  to 
us  are  the  "  Pyrrhonic  Institutes,"  consisting  of  three 
books,  and  the  treatise  "  Against  the  Dogmatists," 
which  comprises  eleven  books.  On  them  his  fame 
will  rest  securely  so  long  as  the  history  of  philosophy 
is  a  subject  of  human  interest.  All  Greek  scepti- 
cism,.all  that  was  most  important  in  the  most  thorough 

105 


HISTORY  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

and  consistent  developLient  of  agnosticism  which  has 
appeared  in  the  world,  seems  to  have  been  preserved 
in  them,  and  would  certainly  have  been  in  great  part 
lost  if  they  had  not  survived.  They  have  had  a  very 
great  influence  even  on  modern  thought  and  philoso- 
phy. The  scepticism  which  prevailed  in  Europe 
from  the  beginning  of  the  sixteenth  to  about  the  close 
of  the  eighteenth  century  drew  its  inspiration,  its 
principles,  and  its  methods  largely  from  the  writings 
of  Sextus.  Montaigne  and  Huet,  Bayle  and  Hume, 
borrowed  as  freely  from  him  as  he  himself  had  done 
from  Arcesilaos  and  Carneades,  ^nesidemus  and 
Agrippa.  Probably  he  originated  no  absolutely  new 
agnostic  idea  or  argument,  but  has  transmitted  to  us 
only  thoughts  and  reasonings  which  he  derived  to 
some  extent  from  his  Greek  predecessors;  probably 
also,  however,  there  is  scarcely  any  absolutely  new  ag- 
nostic idea  or  argument  in  all  modern  literature, 
scarcely  any  even  which  are  not  to  be  found  indicated 
to  some  extent  in  the  pages  of  Sextus. 

Greco-Roman  philosophical  scepticism  began  its 
course  in  the  latter  half  of  the  fourth  century  b.c.^ 
and  became  extinct  about  the  commencement  of  the 
third  century  a.d.  It  does  not  appear  to  have  been 
at  any  time  widely  accepted  in  the  classical  world,  and 
certainly  never  enjoyed  the  popularity  of  such  dog- 
matic systems  as  Epicureanism  and  Stoicism,  Prob- 
ably it  was  never  much  more  prevalent  than  it  was 
desirable  it  should  be  as  a  counteractive  to  philosophi- 
cal dogmatism. 

It  dealt,  of  course,  with  religion  and  morality  in 
106 


GRECO-ROMAN  SCEPTICISM 

the  same  spirit  and  fashion  as  with  all  other  things 
maintained  to  be  objects  of  knowledge.  But  it  was 
not  s[)ecially  antagonistic  to  them.  Its  adherents 
showed  no  predilection  for  attacking  religion  or  mo- 
rality ;  on  the  contrary,  even  when  arguing  that  there 
was  no  real  knowledge  possible  of  divine  things  or 
moral  distinctions,  they  professed  to  hold  the  common 
faith  regarding  them.  Carneades  keenly  criticised 
religious  beliefs  and  represented  their  grounds  as  non- 
rational  or  irrational,  but  he  did  not  pretend  that  his 
own  reasoning  did  more  than  show  the  unsatisfactori- 
ness  of  the  reasoning  to  which  it  was  opposed.  He 
ridiculed  various  aspects  and  portions  of  the  popular 
religion,  but  he  did  not  infer  that  it  was  not  to  be  ac- 
cepted. So  Sextus  professed  his  faith  in  the  gods  and 
providence  even  while  he  argued  against  its  reasona- 
bleness. 

The  philosophical  sceptics  of  Greece  and  Rome  had 
little  proselytising  zeal.  Professedly  regarding  in- 
dividual imperturbability  as  the  chief  good,  they  did 
not  aim  at  either  destroying  or  reforming  religion, 
and  still  less  at  revolutionising  society,  but  were  con- 
tent to  influence  only  cultured  and  ingenious  minds. 
Those  who  attribute  to  them  the  ruin  of  religious  faith 
in  the  ancient  world  take  insufficient  account  of  the 
fact  that  philosophical  scepticism  died  out  of  that 
world  and  was  succeeded  by  a  great  dogmatic  reaction 
both  in  philosophy  and  religion.  The  centuries  which 
immediately  preceded  the  definitive  triumph  of 
Christianity  were  characterised  not  by  excessive 
doubt   but   by   excessive   faith.     In   those  centuries 

107 


HISTORY  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

philosophical  scepticism  was  extinct.  It  had  worked 
out  its  own  destruction,  its  endeavours  to  prove  by 
reason  that  truth  coidd  not  be  found  by  reason  hav- 
ing tended  to  make  men  seek  it  by  other  means, — 
faith,  feeling,  mystic  vision,  abnormal  spiritual  proc- 
esses, tradition,  authority,  revelation.  Hence  it  so  ' 
far  prepared  the  way  for  Neo-Platonism  and  Chris- 
tianity, and  inevitably  disappeared  before  them.^ 

IV.  MIDDLE  AGES 

Between  the  disappearance  of  ancient  and  the  rise 
of  modern  agnosticism  there  intervened  a  jx^riod  of 
about  fourteen  hundred  years,  during  which  agnosti- 
cism had  no  distinct  existence  as  a  special  and  pecul- 
iar kind  of  philosophic  thought.  This  is  not  equiva- 
lent to  saying  that  it  was  wholly  absent.  That  would 
not  be  a  correct  assertion.  Agnostic  elements  may 
easily  be  detected  in  various  medieval  systems.  An 
agnostic  spirit  was  even  very  prevalent  during  the  last 
two  centuries  of  medieval  history. 

Several  learned  Christian  agnostics  of  modern 
times  have,  in  part  perhaps  to  justify  their  own  prac- 
tice, represented  the  Christian  Fathers  generally  as 
advocating  the  cause  of  the  Gospel  by  arguments 
drawn  from  the  Greek  Pyrrhonists   and  Academi- 

'  The  general  accounts  of  Greek  Scepticism  in  Zeller,  Owen, 
Brochard  {Philosophic  des  Grecs)^  and  Credaro  (La  Scetticismo  degli 
Accademici)  are  detailed  and  erudite.  Ilirzel's  Untersuchungen  and 
Natorp's  Forschungen  are  indispensable  to  those  who  would  en- 
ter on  a  thorough  study  of  the  subject.  Reid's  edition  of  Cicero's 
Academics  is  valuable.  It  is  greatly  to  be  regretted  that  there  is 
no  adequate  edition  of  Sextus  Empiricus. 

108 


MEDIEVAL  TIMES 

cians.  The  evidence  warrants  no  such  view.  It 
shows  only  that  fervidness  of  temperament  and  dog- 
matic narrowness  led  some  of  the  Fathers  so  to  glory 
in  faith  and  Scripture  as  to  think  and  speak  at  times 
unworthily  of  reason  and  nature. 

There  was  a  kind  of  agnosticism  which  passed  into 
the  theology  of  the  early  and  medieval  Church,  chiefly 
through  the  channel  of  Neo-Platonic  philosophy. 
When  Neo-Platonism  taught  that  God  was  wholly  un- 
approachable by  reason;  that  He  must  be  reached 
through  faith,  or  ecstasy,  or  the  self-surrender  of  in- 
dividual consciousness;  that  He  was  so  essentially 
one  and  so  entirely  indeterminate  as  to  be  without  dis- 
tinctions or  attributes,  without  power,  knowledge, 
love,  justice,  or  excellence,  in  any  sense  intelligible  by 
man ;  it  was  in  one  essential  respect  clearly  agnostic, 
although  in  other  respects  conspicuously  gnostic.  But 
teaching  of  a  like  kind  is  to  be  found  in  the  writings 
of  St.  Augustine  and  the  Pseudo-Dionysius,  and  of 
John  Scotus  Erigena,  Bonaventura,  Eckhart,  Kico- 
laus  of  Cusa,  and  others.  The  authors  named  incul- 
cated in  express  terms  the  doctrine  of  "  learned  igno- 
rance "  (docta  ignorantia),  on  which  Hamilton  and 
Mansel  have  laid  so  much  stress,  and,  indeed,  made 
the  corner-stone  of  their  agnosticism.  They  held 
that  all  positive  knowledge  of  the  Self-existent  Being, 
the  Unconditioned,  is  impossible,  and  that  a  thought- 
ful acquiescence  in  this  fact,  a  carefully  acquired  con- 
viction of  inevitable  nescience  as  regards  ultimate 
reality,  is  the  consummation  of  human  science.  Hence 
it  may  be  maintained  with  a  certain  measure  of  truth 

109 


HISTORY  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

that    Greek   agnosticism    was   rather   absorbed    into 
Christian  thought  than  extinguished  by  it. 

Among  medieval  thinkers  the  nominalists  were  the 
most  sceptical  and  negative,  and  in  the  two  last  cen- 
turies of  the  medieval  era  there  lived  many  nominal- 
ists. They  started  with  empiricist  preconceptions, 
and  were  disposed  to  deny  that  there  could  be  any 
knowledge  except  of  individual  objects  of  sense.  This 
sort  of  philosophising  leads  necessarily  to  some  kind 
of  agnosticism ;  in  the  Middle  Ages  it  naturally  led  to 
a  theological  agnosticism.  ]^ominalists  like  William 
of  Occam  and  Peter  D'Ailly  may  not  inappropriately 
be  described  as  theological  agnostics,  seeing  that  al- 
though they  accepted  the  doctrines  of  the  Church  as 
articles  of  faith  imposed  by  legitimate  authority,  they 
relegated  theology  to  the  sphere  of  the  unprovable 
and  unknowable.  The  nominalists  generally  so  sev- 
ered and  opposed  faith  and  reason  that  they  could 
claim  to  be  rigidly  orthodox,  while  holding  the  human 
mind  to  be  incapable  of  finding  valid  reasons  for  be- 
lief in  the  existence  of  God  or  in  any  other  supersen- 
suous  verity.  From  this  unnaturally  divided  root  the 
doctrine  of  a  twofold  truth, — the  doctrine  that  equally 
valid  dicta  of  faith  and  reason  may  not  only  be  dis- 
tinct but  contradictory, — that  what  is  true  in  theology 
may  be  false  in  philosophy,  and  vice  versa, — was  a 
very  natural  outgrowth.  And  the  doctrine  found  ac- 
ceptance. It  had  its  strongholds  in  the  Universities  of 
Paris  and  of  Pavia.  In  the  thirteenth  century  eccle- 
siastical censures  were  pronounced  against  it,  but  it 
was,  perhaps,  more  prevalent  three  centuries  later. 

110 


TRANSITION  TO   MODEEN  TIMES 

There  were  many  ready  to  say  with  Pomponazzi — 
"  I  believe  as  a  Christian  what  1  cannot  believe  as  a 
philosopher." 

To  explain  fully  how  agnosticism  was  suppressed 
to  the  extent  that  it  was  during  fourteen  hundred 
years,  and  yet  how  the  suppression  instead  of  being 
completely  and  permanently  effective  prepared  the 
advent  and  influenced  the  development  of  a  new  era 
of  a  most  powerful  agnosticism,  which  still  shows  no 
signs  of  decadence,  would  require  a  philosophical  sur- 
vey of  medieval  history,  showing  how  Christianity 
came  to  be  accepted ;  how  the  Church  became  subject 
to  a  priestly  hierarchy ;  how  theology  was  shaped  into 
system,  and  all  science  brought  under  its  control ; 
how  society  was  organised  by  ecclesiastical  authority ; 
and  then  how  a  reaction  of  thought  set  in;  how  the 
general  mind  of  Europe,  influenced  by  various  causes 
and  circumstances,  ceased  to  be  satisfied  with  its  con- 
dition, began  to  regard  with  a  critical  and  even  hos- 
tile disposition  the  powers  which  claimed  lordship 
over  it,  and  learned  to  cherish  aspirations  and  hopes 
which  had  been  previously  unfelt  or  stifled  or  con- 
cealed. This,  of  course,  cannot  be  here  attempted, 
and  so  we  pass  at  once  to  outline  the  history  of  Mod- 
ern Agnosticism. 

V.  FIRST  PERIOD  OF  MODERN  AGNOSTICISM.         CAUSES 
AND  CHARACTERISTICS 

The  history  of  Modern  Agnosticism  may  be  divided 
into  two  periods:  the  first  extending  from  about  the 

111 


HISTORY   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

beginning  of  tlie  sixteenth  century  to  about  the  close 
of  the  fourth  decade  of  the  eighteenth  century;  the 
second  comprehending  tlie  time  from  the  commence- 
ment of  Hume's  philosophical  career  to  the  present 
day. 

There  were  a  variety  of  causes  favourable  to  agnos- 
ticism operative  throughout  the  first  of  these  periods. 
The  dominant  and  most  comprehensive  one  was  that 
just  referred  to — the  general  change  in  the  European 
mind  from  submissiveness  to  authority  and  acquies- 
cence in  dogma  to  an  independent  and  critical  dispo- 
sition of  spirit.  The  struggles  of  the  conflicting 
forces  in  the  medieval  world,  the  new  experiences 
which  the  course  of  time  had  brought  with  it,  a  mul- 
titude of  notable  events,  and  even  the  efforts  of  scho- 
lasticism itself  to  extend  its  own  sway  and  to  promote 
by  argument  the  cause  of  authority  and  faith,  had  all 
concurred  in  bringing  about  that  profound  and  com- 
prehensive change,  and  giving  rise  to  the  modern 
world,  which,  as  contrasted  with  the  medieval  world, 
has  for  its  distinctive  characteristic  the  indeiDcndent 
exercise  of  reason.  Then  special  causes,  which  were, 
however,  closely  connected  with  the  general  cause, 
strongly  favoured  the  diffusion  of  the  agnostic  spirit 
in  the  period  indicated.  Thus  there  was  such  a  cause 
in  the  state  into  which  philosophy  lapsed  when  scho- 
lasticism broke  up.  It  was  a  state  of  chaos  in  which 
all  the  ancient  systems  and  a  multitude  of  new  ones, 
hastily  extemporised,  struggled  with  each  other,  and 
sought  in  vain  for  general  recognition.  It  would 
have  been  strange  if  scepticism  had  not  been  among 

112 


MODERN  AGNOSTICISM 

them.  The  strife  occasioned  by  differences  of  opin- 
ion as  to  religion  was  probably  an  even  more  powerful 
cause  of  scepticism  than  the  struggle  of  philosophies. 
Its  violence  and  unscrupulousness,  and  the  wicked 
deeds  and  horrible  wars  which  it  produced,  directly 
tended  to  discredit  both  religion  and  human  nature, 
and  to  make  men  disbelieve  in  truth  and  morality. 
The  combination  of  intellectual  culture  and  of  moral 
and  religious  corruption,  widely  prevalent  in  the 
epoch  of  transition  from  medieval  to  modern  times, 
worked  in  the  same  direction.  Further,  the  special 
sciences  and  professional  studies  were  in  a  condition 
much  more  fitted  to  foster  and  confirm  than  to  re- 
strain and  correct  the  sceptical  spirit.  The  conject- 
ural and  the  false  in  them  largely  predominated  over 
the  certain  and  the  true.  To  be  led  to  consider  them 
with  a  critical  mind  was  to  be  subjected  to  the  temp- 
tation to  regard  all  science  as  vanity  and  delusion. 

Scepticism  even  in  the  form  which  may  be  called 
agnosticism  was,  accordingly,  prevalent  in  the  six- 
teenth and  seventeenth  centuries.  But  it  was,  of 
course,  considerably  different  from  the  agnosticism 
of  Hume  and  Kant,  and  of  our  contemporaries.  It 
had  its  own  characteristics,  derived  from  the  causes 
which  originated  it  and  the  circumstances  in  which  it 
appeared. 

One  of  these  characteristics  was  imperfect  develop- 
ment. It  did  not  rest  on  any  searching  or  compre- 
hensive criticism  of  the  powers  of  the  human  intellect. 
It  did  not  attain  in  the  writings  of  any  of  its  repre- 
sentatives a  properly  philosophical  character.     It  was 

113 


HISTORY  OP  AGNOSTICISM 

mainly  the  expression  of  an  exaggerated  depreciation 
of  knowledge  or  of  a  despair  of  acquiring  knowledge, 
due  to  the  real  or  imagined  detection  of  the  uncer- 
tainty of  what  passed  for  science  and  of  the  aberra- 
tions of  what  was  called  reason  at  the  time  in  which 
it  prevailed.  It  moralised  and  preached ;  satirised, 
jested,  and  declaimed ;  cultivated  belles  lettres  and 
availed  itself  of  the  resources  of  erudition  favourable 
to  its  ends;  but  it  shunned  the  arduous  labours  of 
real  philosophising,  and  neglected  exact  analyses,  se- 
vere argumentation,  logical  precision,  and  verbal  ac- 
curacy. It  was  a  superficial,  popular  philosophy; 
not  a  solidly  founded  or  carefully  built  up  speculative 
system, 
^jj^v-*^*'^  Another  characteristic  of  the  first  phase  of  modern 
nji  agnosticism  was  absence  of  essential  originality.  It 
^ftW*^*^^  was  in  the  main  a  revival  of  Greek  agnosticism.     Its 

weapons  of  warfare  were  drawn  almost  entirely  from 
the  arsenals  of  ancient  scepticism,  and  especially 
from  the  works  of  Sextus.  The  only  originality  of 
its  champions  lay  in  their  mode  of  handling  those 
weapons.  Even  in  the  scepticism  of  Montaigne  there 
is  nothing  new  but  the  manner  of  expression,  the  fresh 
literary  style.  The  sort  of  want  of  originality  indi- 
cated is  no  reason  for  depreciating  the  authors  re- 
ferred to  or  undervaluing  their  services,  seeing  that  it 
was  not  only  compatible  with  but  favourable  to  orig- 
inality as  regards  the  expression  of  their  views.  Each 
of  them  was  remarkably  successful  in  presenting  a 
scepticism  essentially  common  to  all  with  a  natural- 
ness and   individuality  of  form  which  contributed 

114 


ANCIENT  AND   MODERN   SCEPTICISM 

greatly  to  its  attractiveness  and  diffusion.  It  was  no 
ordinary  service  which  they  rendered  to  the  world 
when  they  resuscitated,  revivified,  and  popularised 
the  agnosticism  of  antiquity  among  their  contempo- 
raries, and  so  transmitted  it  to  future  generations. 
But  for  their  comparatively  unoriginal  and  super- 
ficial scepticism  we  should  probably  have  had  neither 
the  more  original  and  profound  scepticism  nor  the 
more  original  and  profound  positive  speculation  of 
later  ages. 

A  third  characteristic  of  the  agnosticism  of  the 
transition  period  is  that  it  was  predominantly  relig- 
ious in  aim,  and,  at  least,  more  reverent  towards  re- 
ligion than  towards  science.  It  was  generally  repre- 
sented by  its  advocates  as  the  best  defence  of  religion. 
Only  in  the  sixteenth  century  did  attempts  to  support 
religion  by  philosophical  scepticism  begin  to  be  made ; 
only  in  the  seventeenth  century  did  they  become  com- 
mon. The  ancient  sceptics  were  more  consistent 
than  to  make  such  attempts.  Their  scepticism  was 
all  of  a  piece,  so  to  speak.  They  saw  that  if  it  could 
be  shown  that  men  have  no  knowledge  of  objects,  it 
followed  that  they  can  have  no  knowledge  of  religious 
objects;  that  the  general  includes  the  particular. 
Some  of  the  early  Christian  Fathers  were  led  by 
their  zeal  against  pagan  philosophy  to  harsh  censure 
of  philosophy  itself,  and  to  occasional  denials  of  the 
authority  of  reason ;  but  none  of  them  sought  to  raise 
scepticism  to  the  rank  of  a  method  of  producing  be- 
lievers. Of  course,  the  scholastic  divines  felt  no  need 
of  such  a  method.    It  was  only  when  reason  began  to 

115 


HISTORY   OF   AGNOSTICISM 

take  up  an  attitude  of  opposition  to  religion,  and 
when  it  began,  at  least,  within  the  sphere  of  religion 
to  criticise  independently  and  unfavourably  the  dog- 
mas of  the  Church,  that  there  was  evoked  an  antago- 
nistic spirit,  — a  desire  to  humiliate  and  discredit 
reason  in  order  thereby  to  exalt  and  glorify  faith. 

VI.    BEPKESIONTATIVE  AGNOSTICS   OF    THE   TRANSITION 
PERIOD 

The  first  representative  of  modern  agnosticism 
"was  Henry  Cornelius  Agrippa  of  Nettesheim  (1486- 
1535).  His  career  was  of  the  most  diversified  and 
romantic  character.  He  lived  in  many  lands,  ac- 
quired many  languages,  studied  all  kinds  of  subjects, 
and  passed  through  the  most  varied  experiences.  As 
early  as  the  twentieth  year  of  his  age  he  was  striving 
to  fathom  the  secrets  of  theosophy,  alchemy,  astrol- 
ogy, and  magic,  and  interesting  himself  in  the  foun- 
dation of  Rosicrucian  societies.  He  was  a  conspirator 
in  Spain,  a  soldier  in  Italy,  a  courtier  in  Austria,  an 
ambassador  in  England,  a  physician  in  Switzerland, 
a  theologian  at  Dole  in  Burgundy,  an  advocate  at 
Metz,  and  served  in  other  capacities  in  other  places. 
He  was  knighted  on  the  battlefield ;  he  was  a  Doctor 
of  Laws,  a  Doctor  of  Medicine,  and  a  Doctor  of  Divin- 
ity ;  and,  in  popular  reputation,  a  most  powerful  sor- 
cerer and  magician.  An  adventurer  he  unquestion- 
ably was,  but  not  an  unprincipled  one.  Although 
impetuous  and  imprudent,  and  sometimes  driven  into 
false  positions,  he  was  essentially  honest,  chivalrous, 

116 


AGRIPPA  OF   NETTESHEIM 

and  even,  notwithstanding  his  wars  with  sword  and 
pen,  refined  and  gentle.  While  he  saw  clearly  the 
errors  of  the  Church  of  Rome  and  condemned  them 
with  a  boldness  which  roused  against  him  the  wrath 
of  its  clergy  and  monks,  and  involved  him  in  much 
suffering,  he  refused,  like  Dean  Colet,  Sir  Thomas 
More,  and  many  other  learned  and  good  men  of  his 
time,  to  take  part  in  the  disruption  of  the  visible  unity 
of  Christendom. 

His  two  chief  works  present  him  to  us  in  very  dif- 
ferent aspects.  In  the  treatise  On  Occult  Philosophy 
(written  in  1509,  and,  after  being  widely  circulated 
in  MS.,  printed  in  a  revised  form  at  Antwerp  in 
1531),  we  see  him  in  his  eager,  credulous,  enthusias- 
tic early  manhood,  a  theosophic  mystic,  a  confident 
believer  in  the  existence  and  cognoscibility  of  magical 
and  marvellous  secret  powers  pervading  nature,  a  man 
much  too  ready  to  accept  as  science  all  that  claimed  to 
be  science.  In  the  work  on  account  of  which  he  is 
mentioned  here,  A  Declamation  on  the  Uncertainty 
and  Vanity  of  the  Arts  and  Sciences  (written  in  1526 
and  published  in  1530),  we  see  the  same  man,  but 
that  man  disillusioned,  and  who  has  gone,  as  men  of 
his  temperament  not  infrequently  do,  to  the  contrary 
extreme. 

The  work  makes  no  pretensions  to  impartiality:  it 
is  avowedly  a  satire,  "  a  cynical  declamation."  Yet, 
in  the  main,  it  is  quite  serious  and  sincere.  Its  au- 
thor knew  the  sciences  and  arts  of  his  age  as  scarcely 
any  one  else  did ;  but  he  had  come  to  the  conclusion 
that   men   enormously    overestimated   the   worth   of 

117 


HISTORY    OF   AGNOSTICISM 

them,  and  felt,  in  particular,  how  much  lie  had  been 
himself  deceived  in  regard  to  them.  Hence  he  now 
assails  them  with  as  much  fervour  as  he  had  formerly 
lauded  them.  Surveying  them  one  after  another  in 
a  long  succession  of  chapters,  he  gives  prominence  to 
what  is  weak  and  uncertain,  useless  or  hurtful,  in  all 
human  studies  and  professions,  and  argues  that  it  is 
dangerous  to  trust  them,  foolish  to  be  proud  of  them ; 
that  all  is  dubious  except  God's  Word,  and  that  its 
truth  is  accessible  to  all  men  by  faith  in  Jesus  Christ 
and  the  enlightening  grace  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 

The  scepticism  of  Agrippa  was  not  a  reasoned-out 
theory  or  even  a  definitive  intellectual  conviction, 
but  a  frame  of  mind,  and  indeed  largely  of  feeling, 
of  the  exaggeration  in  which  he  was  himself  so  far 
conscious,  produced  by  his  having  so  often  found 
what  was  called  science  to  be  conjecture  or  absurd- 
ity and  the  professions  esteemed  most  honourable  to 
be  pervaded  with  deceit  and  charlatanry.  The  one 
thing  to  which  his  scepticism  did  not  extend,  the  one 
thing  in  which  he  felt  there  was  no  illusion  or  falsity, 
was  God's  Word  received  in  its  plain  and  simple 
meaning  as  revealed  in  the  Gospel.^ 

'  The  late  Professor  Henry  Morley's  TAfe  of  Henry  Cornelius 
Agrippa  von  Nettesheim^  Doctor  and  Knight,  commonly  known  as 
a  Magician,  2  vols.,  1856,  is  an  afliniral)le  biography  and  study, — 
the  first  work  in  which  full  justice  was  done  to  Agrippa,  although 
Naude,  Moreri,  and  Bayle  had  to  some  extent  shown  that  he  had 
been  greatly  calumniated.  M.  Auguste  Frost's  Corneille  Afjrippa, 
sa  vie  et  ses  aeuvres,  2  vols.,  1881-82,  is  not  nearly  so  vivid  and  ar- 
tistic, but  he  has  pushed  research  further  and  added  considerably 
to  our  knowledge  of  the  events  and  circumstances  of  Agrippa's  ca- 
reer. Owen  treats  of  Agrippa's  agnosticism  very  fully,  but,  in  my 
opinion,  considerably  exaggerates  it. 

118 


MONTAIGNE 

Michel  de  Montaigne  (1533-1592)  did  much  more 
to  diffuse  scepticism.  His  Essais  (1580),  owing  to 
qualities  on  which  hundreds  of  critics  and  admirers 
have  descanted  but  on  which  no  word  need  here  be 
said,  have  enjoyed  immense  popularity  and  exercised 
immense  influence.  Scepticism  has  never  appeared 
in  a  more  generally  attractive  form :  and  all  ancient 
scepticism  is  there, — transmitted,  revivified,  and 
modernised  in  passing  through  the  mind  of  Mon- 
taigne into  the  book  which  he  so  truly  tells  us  "  is 
himself." 

No  writer  in  the  whole  history  of  literature,  so  far 
as  I  know,  has  portrayed  his  OAvn  character  with 
more  candour,  fulness,  and  skill  than  Montaigne  has 
done  in  his  Essais.  That  character  was  obviously 
one  constitutionally  favourable  to  the  reception  of  the 
agnostic  spirit, — one  to  which  "  not  less  than  knowl- 
edge doubt  was  grateful."  Montaigne  loved  dearly 
his  own  ease  and  comfort ;  disliked  all  constraint ; 
was  keenly  alive  to  the  hatefulness  of  intolerance  and 
persecution ;  was  quick  to  see  reasons  both  for  belief 
and  disbelief  in  all  opinions ;  and,  although  very  fond 
of  reasoning  for  the  sake  of  the  pleasure  of  the  exer- 
cise, was  too  impatient  and  unsteady  to  seek  truth  in 
a  persistent  and  methodical  manner.  The  almost 
exclusively  classical  and  humanist  education  which 
he  received  tended  to  foster  his  sceptical  proclivities. 
It  made  him  more  in  sympathy  with  the  pagan  than 
the  Christian  spirit,  and  failed  to  initiate  him  into 
any  real  acquaintance  with  science.  He  knew  many 
things,  but  few  well.     The  one  subject  which  he  care- 

119 


HISTOKY   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

fully  studied,  his  own  self-contradictory  and  change- 
ful nature,  was  not  suggestive  of  aught  permanent  or 
stable.  Further,  the  character  of  the  period  in  which 
he  lived  must  have  contributed  to  evoke  and  confirm 
his  scepticism.  It  was  not  only  the  time  when  the 
conflict  between  the  ruling  ideas  of  scholasticism  and 
the  beliefs  distinctive  of  the  renaissance  was  at  its 
height,  but  also  one  of  the  most  deplorable  epochs  of 
French  history:  an  age  of  ethical  and  spiritual  as 
well  as  of  intellectual  disintegration,  of  lax  morality, 
of  religious  hypocrisy  and  religious  fanaticism,  of 
political  unscrupulousness  and  of  continuous  and  fe- 
rocious civil  war,  in  which  Romanists  and  Huguenots, 
Leaguers  and  Lutherans,  alike  sought  to  cloak  the 
most  abominable  crimes  with  professions  of  piety  and 
of  patriotism.  It  is  easy  to  understand  how  in  such 
evil  days  a  clear-sighted  and  peace-loving  man  like 
Montaigne  should  have  come  to  form  a  low  estimate 
of  human  nature,  and  to  have  the  most  serious  doubts 
of  the  attainability  of  truth. 

The  scepticism  of  Montaigne  was  of  an  indulgent, 
half-pitying,  half-contemptuous  kind.  No  man  could 
be  more  tolerant  towards  all  sorts  of  opinions  and  ac- 
tions: their  diversity  and  strangeness  were  an  un- 
failing source  of  interest  and  amusement  to  him. 
The  contradictions  and  absurdities  of  the  learned 
afforded  him  his  favourite  argument  for  representing 
so-called  science  as  a  failure,  and  the  human  mind  as 
singularly  unreasonable  in  its  reasonings.  For  his 
own  part,  he  did  not  profess  to  philosophise  or  even 
to  be  consistent ;  did  not  put  forth  his  opinions  "  as 

120 


ITS   GRECO-ROMAN  SOURCE 

true  but  as  his  "  ;  and  did  not  formally  inculcate 
scepticism,  but  so  treated,  in  his  own  easy  and  natu- 
ral, free  and  familiar  way,  whatever  themes  happened 
to  occur  to  him,  as  to  make  them  all  suggest  the  vanity 
of  anxious  search  for  truth,  and  minister  to  the  spirit 
of  doubt. 

The  manner  in  which  he  presented  his  scepticism 
was  entirely  his  own  and  inimitable ;  the  scepticism 
itself  he  derived  from  Greco-Roman  sources.  There 
was  no  distinct  originality  in  his  point  of  view  or  ab- 
solute novelty  in  his  arguments.  On  the  other  hand, 
there  was  very  little,  if  anything,  of  a  sceptical  nature 
and  tendency  which  the  ancient  sceptics  are  known  to 
have  urged  that  he  did  not  recall  and  make  use  of  in 
his  own  peculiarly  fascinating  way. 

His  scepticism  must  be  credited  with  thoroughness. 
He  preferred  the  Pyrrhonian  attitude  towards  truth, 
knowledge,  and  certitude  to  the  Academic.  He  saw 
the  inconsistency  of  at  once  denying  those  things, 
and  yet  admitting,  as  the  Academicians  did,  "  a  cer- 
tain partiality  of  judgment,"  "  an  appearance  of  like- 
lihood," in  any  direction  or  instance.  "  What  is  such 
an  apparent  inclination  but  a  recognition  of  some 
more  apparent  truth  in  this  than  in  that  ?  "  .  .  . 
"  Why  do  they  (the  Academicians)  suffer  themselves 
to  incline  and  be  swayed  by  verisimilitude,  if  they 
know  not  the  truth  ?  "  The  symbol  or  emblem  of  his 
scepticism  was  a  balance  perfectly  poised  as  regards 
truth  and  falsehood,  knowledge  and  nescience,  and 
therefore  liable  to  be  swayed  or  turned  either  way  as 
regards  belief,  feeling,  or  action  by  any  non-rational 

121 


HISTORY  OF   AGNOSTICISM 

influence,  however  strange  or  slight.  His  motto  was 
not  Je  ne  sais  pas,  but  Que  sais-je  ? 

Being  radical,  his  scepticism  was  also  naturally 
universal.  The  notion  that  it  extended  only  to  meta- 
physical things  or  questions,  and  so  was  merely  a  sort 
of  Positivism,  has  found  defenders,  but  is  wholly  er- 
roneous. Montaigne  troubled  himself  very  little 
about  metaphysical  disputes.  His  doubts  were 
brought  to  bear  on  all  the  apprehensions  of  sense  and 
all  the  applications  of  reason ;  they  spared  nothing  in 
morals  and  religion.  He  acknowledged,  indeed,  that 
we  cannot  help  assenting  to  certain  perceptions  or  ap- 
pearances of  sense;  but  he  none  the  less  on  that  ac- 
count held  that  the  senses  alter  and  falsify  everything 
that  they  bring  us.  N^ay,  even  from  our  entire  de- 
pendence on  them  he  inferred  our  entire  ignorance  not 
only  of  their  own  objects  but  of  the  objects  of  all  our 
other  faculties,  these  being  all  derived  from  sense. 
What  are  commonly  regarded  as  virtues  and  as  laws 
of  conscience  and  principles  and  verities  of  religion, 
he  regarded  as  products  of  custom  and  other  causes 
wholly  independent  of  truth  and  knowledge. 

Yet  although  his  scepticism  undoubtedly  extended 
to  morality  and  religion,  he  did  not  seek  by  diffusing 
it  to  spread  immorality  or  irreligion,  or  even  moral 
or  religious  indifferentism.  He  wished  to  make  life 
better  and  happier,  and  recognised  a  Divine  excel- 
lency in  Christianity.  He  deemed  it  right  to  reserve 
for  faith  a  sphere  exempt  from  the  intrusive  interro- 
gations of  reason.  He  acknowledged  the  need  of  su- 
pernatural grace  to  convey  Divine  truth  to  the  mind 

122 


CHARRON 

and  heart  of  man,  and  "  the  need  of  a  Divine  basis 
and  fonndation  on  which  those  who  rest  will  not  be 
shaken  as  others  are  by  human  accidents,  the  love  of 
novelty,  the  constraint  of  princes,  the  fortunes  of 
parties,  the  rash  and  fortuitous  changes  of  opinions, 
the  subtleties  of  argument,  or  the  attractions  of  rhet- 
oric." ' 

Montaigne  had  in  the  later  years  of  his  life  an  inti- 
mate friend  and  admiring  disciple  in  Peter  Charron 
(1541-1603),  a  Roman  Catholic  theologian  and  cel- 
ebrated preacher.  This  divine  published  in  1593  a 
work  of  religious  apologetics,  Les  Trois  VeriUs,  in 
which  he  defended  Theism  against  atheists,  Chris- 
tianity against  idolaters,  Jews,  and  Mohammedans, 
and  Catholicism  against  Protestants,  and  sought  to 
establish  these  three  positions:  1st,  There  is  one 
God  whom  alone  we  ought  to  worship ;  2nd,  Of  all  re- 
ligions the  Christian  is  the  only  credible  one ;  and  3rd, 
Of  all  Christian  communions  the  Roman  is  the  only 
safe  one.  The  orthodoxy  of  this  work  passed  un- 
challenged, although  its  spirit  and  the  method  of  rea- 
soning pursued  in  it  were  of  a  decidedly  agnostic 
character.     It  was  not  otherwise  with  the  Discours 

'  The  following  are  among  the  English  writing  regarding  Mon- 
taigne most  worth  consulting :  (1)  Bayle  St.  John's  Montaigne  the 
Essayist,  2  vols.,  1857;  (2)  Dean  Church's  Article  in  the  Oxford 
Essays,  1859 ;  (3)  Collins's  Montaigne  (Blackwood  s'  Foreign  Clas- 
sics), 1889;  and  (4)  Owen's  Skeptics  of  the  French  Renaissance,  ch. 
i.,  1893.  Bmneti^re  {Manuel  de  rhistoire  de  la  litterature  fran- 
^aise,  pp.  86,  87)  gives  a  judiciously  selected  list  of  French  writ- 
ings. Two  German  authors,  H.  Thimrae  (1875)  and  A  Hemming 
(1879),  have  published  dissertations  with  the  title  Der  Skepticismus 
Montaignes. 

123 


HISTORY   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

Chretiens,  published  in  1600.  But  the  De  la  Sagesse, 
which  appeared  in  the  following  year  and  revealed 
the  scepticism  of  its  author  in  a  fully  developed  form, 
evoked  a  great  storm  of  wrathful  controversy.  And 
from  his  own  day  until  now  many  have  supposed  that 
the  same  man  could  not  have  honestly  preached  the 
"  Christian  Discourses,"  and  believed  what  he  wrote 
in  "  The  Three  Truths,"  and  yet  entertained  the  scep- 
tical views  set  forth  in  the  "  Treatise  on  Wisdom." 
But  that  merely  shows  that  those  who  have  thought  so 
have  not  understood  the  character  of  his  scepticism : 
a  scepticism  not  less  sceptical  of  itself  than  of  other 
things;  a  scepticism  founded  on  distrust  of  reason, 
yet  anxious  to  draw  from  the  admission  of  the  weak- 
ness and  worthlessness  of  reason  some  advantage  to 
the  cause  of  religion  and  virtue  and  social  peace. 

The  scepticism  of  Charron  was  substantially  the 
same  as  that  of  Montaigne,  but  he  expounded  it  in  a 
graver  and  more  systematic  form.  As  Montaigne 
can  no  more  be  justly  credited  with  any  essential  orig- 
inality of  thought  than  Charron,  and  the  style  and 
method  of  the  two  men  are  most  unlike,  it  seems  un- 
fair to  represent,  as  is  often  done,  the  latter  as  a  mere 
disciple  and  copyist  of  the  former. 

Aticording  to  Charron,  science  is  unattainable: 
truth  is  hid  in  the  bosom  of  God,  and  cannot  be 
reached  by  the  natural  faculties  of  men.  Education 
and  custom  mainly  determine  what  our  religion  will 
be.  Wisdom — that  practical  acquaintance  with  one's 
own  spirit,  its  limits,  weaknesses,  and  obligations, 
which  displays  itself  in  honouring  and  serving  God, 


SANCHEZ 

governing  the  desires  and  appetites,  conducting  one- 
self moderately  and  equally  in  prosperity  and  adver- 
sity, obeying  the  laws,  customs,  and  ceremonies  of 
one's  country,  trying  to  do  good  to  others,  acting  pru- 
dently in  business,  being  prepared  for  death,  and 
maintaining  peace  in  one's  own  heart  and  conscience 
— is  what  we  may  hope  for  and  should  strive  for. 
Laborious  efforts  to  attain  science  and  passionate 
contentions  about  religion  are  alike  vain.  Reason  is 
one  of  the  feeblest  of  instruments  and  the  sphere  of 
certainty  is  of  the  narrowest  range. 

Charron  treats  of  virtue  in  a  much  warmer  and 
worthier  tone  than  Montaigne.  He  places  it  above 
everything  else,  and  ascribes  to  it  absolute  dignity  and 
unconditioned  value  in  words  which  remind  us  of 
what  Kant  has  said  of  the  moral  law.  But  this  is  not 
to  be  regarded  as  a  limitation  of  his  scepticism,  un- 
derstood as  equivalent  to  agnosticism :  it  is  a  declara- 
tion of  his  faith,  not  an  admission  or  profession  of 
his  knowledge,  and  therefore  quite  compatible  with 
agnosticism.^ 

Francis  Sanchez  (1552-1632)  was  uninfluenced 
by  either  Montaigne  or  Charron.  He  was  of  Judeo- 
Portuguese  origin,  but  spent  the  greater  part  of  his 
life  in  France,  and  chiefly  at  Toulouse,  where  he 
taught  philosophy  and  also  laboured  both  as  a  medical 
professor  and  practitioner.  His  writings  are  all  in 
Latin,  and  deal  mostly  with  anatomical  and  medical 

'  See  on  Charron  (as  also  on  Montaigne)  D.  Stewart  in  his  Dis- 
sertation (Collected  Works,  vol.  i.  pp.  98-107);  Owen,  Sk.  F  R., 
cli.  iii.  ;  Ste.  Beiive,  Causeries  du  Liindi,  vol.  xi.  ;  and  Vinet,  Mor- 
alistes  franjais  au  xvi'  siecle. 

125 


HISTORY  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

subjects.  The  work  on  account  of  which  he  has  been 
ranked  among  sceptics,  A  Treatise  on  the  Noble  and 
First  Universal  Science  that  Nothing  is  Known,  al- 
though not  published  until  1581,  had  been  in  man- 
uscript since  1576,  four  years  previous  to  the  appear- 
ance of  Montaigne's  Essais.  In  it  he  criticises  very 
courageously  and,  on  the  whole,  very  justly,  the  sci- 
ence and  logic  of  his  age,  dwelling  especially  on  the 
inadequacy  of  syllogistic  rules  and  processes  to  the 
requirements  of  research ;  on  the  fallacious  substitu- 
tion of  words  for  things  and  of  abstractions  for  facts ; 
on  the  folly  of  inventing  imaginary  entities  and  hav- 
ing recourse  to  occult  qualities  for  the  explanation  of 
experiences  instead  of  directly,  patiently,  and  method- 
ically studying  them ;  on  the  worthlessness  of  verbal 
definitions  and  mere  erudition  ;  and  on  the  pernicious 
consequences  of  a  servile  dependence  on  authority. 
All  that,  however,  shows  not  scepticism  but  good  sense 
and  the  intellectual  clearness  of  a  naturally  scientific 
mind.  And  I  am  not  prepared  to  maintain  that  San- 
chez can  be  fairly  classed  among  philosophical  scep- 
tics. Yet  there  is,  perhaps,  no  sceptic  of  the  sixteenth 
or  seventeenth  century  whose  language  has  a  more  ag- 
nostic sound  than  his  in  many  passages.  But  all  his 
seemingly  agnostic  utterances  may  be  found  on  exam- 
ination to  mean  comparatively  little,  and  what  would 
be  quite  harmless  did  it  not  suggest  to  the  unwary 
reader  more  than  it  really  means.  They  can  all  be 
referred  to  one  and  the  same  cause — a  most  unfortu- 
nate and  indefensible  definition  of  "  knowledge " 
{scientia).     He  chooses  to  mean  by  it  7*ei  perfecta 

]26 


HIS  RELIGIOUS  FAITH 

cognitioj  the  complete  comprehension  of  a  thing  both 
in  itself  and  in  all  its  relationships.  Of  course,  with 
such  a  conception  of  knowledge  he  could  not  fail  to 
reach  the  conclusion  quod  nihil  scitur,  and  might 
have  reached  it  by  a  single  step  instead  of  by  the 
lengthened  course  which  he  actually  followed — that 
of  showing  the  various  respects  in  which  human  cog- 
nition, as  regards  alike  its  object,  subject,  and  nature, 
falls  short  of  perfection.  But  who  pretends  to  have 
"  a  perfect  cognition,"  an  absolute  comprehension, 
of  anything?  No  one.  Only  an  infinite  intelli- 
gence can  have  knowledge  in  that  sense  even  of  the 
least  of  things.  Hence  the  question  as  to  whether  or 
not  Sanchez  was  an  agnostic  can  only  be  settled  by 
ascertaining  whether  or  not  he  denied  the  attainabil- 
ity of  knowledge  in  the  sense  in  which  other  people  af- 
firm its  attainability.  It  seems  to  me  that  he  did  not. 
He  certainly  speaks  of  a  scientia,  and  even  of  a  scien- 
tia  firma,  very  different  from  the  scientia  of  his  def- 
inition ;  of  a  scientia  quantum,  possimus,  a  scientia 
quantum  fragilitas  humana  patitur;  and  announced 
his  intention  to  follow  up  the  Quod  Nihil  Scitur  by 
another  tractate  showing  how  such  knowledge  or  sci- 
ence may  be  attained.  He  has  also  informed  us  that 
he  meant  his  method  to  begin  from  the  perceptions  of 
sense,  the  primary  data  of  all  knowledge,  and  to  pro- 
ceed experimentally  and  critically  {per  experimentum 
et  per  judicium  liherum,  non  irrationahile  tamen). 
The  book  promised  unfortunately  never  appeared ; 
but,  notwithstanding  that,  we  seem  entitled  to  consid- 
er his  so-called  scepticism  as  only  the  initial  and  pre- 

127 


HISTORY  OF  AGNOSTICISM 

paratorj  stage  of  his  philosophy,  and  himself  not  as 
an  agnostic  but  as  an  eminent  precursor  of  Bacon  and 
Descartes.  He  was  a  devout  Roman  Catholic.  There 
is  no  evidence  that  his  religious  faith  rested  on  scep- 
tical foundations.^ 

La  Mothe  Le  Yayer  (1588-1672),  a  facile  and  en- 
tertaining writer,  highly  reputed  in  his  own  age  as  a 
scholar,  and  influential  both  at  Court  and  in  the 
Academy,  was  a  typical  specimen  of  the  seventeenth- 
century  sceptic.  A  considerable  number  of  the  com- 
positions contained  in  the  collected  edition  of  his 
(Euvres  are  illustrative  of  his  agnostic  mode  of 
thought  and  reasoning,  but  the  Cinq  Dialogues  faits 
a  Vimitation  des  anciens  par  Horatius  Tuhero  (1671) 
is  the  most  famous  and  interesting  of  them  in  this  ref- 
erence. Le  Vayer  was  thoroughly  imbued  with  the 
spirit  of  the  old  Greek  Pyrrhonians  and  Academi- 
cians, and  constantly  used  their  arguments.  Sextus 
was  "  his  dear  patron  and  venerable  master,"  the 
Hypotyposes  "  a  golden  book,  an  inestimable  and  Di- 
vine writing,"  and  the  ten  tropes  "  his  decalogue." 
His  motto  was  the  two  lines  of  Spanish  verse — 

"  De  las  eosas  mas  seguras 
La  mas  segura  es  dudar." 

"  Of  things  most  sure  the  surest  is  doubt." 

He  had  a  great  predilection  for  what  has  been 
called  the  geographical  argument  for  scepticism.  In- 
deed it  was  chiefly  by  dwelling  on  the  different  opin- 

'  See  Owen,  Sk.  F.  R.,  ch.  iv. ;  and  L.  Gerkrath,  Franz  Sanchez, 
&c.,  Wien,  1860. 

128 


LE  VAYER  AND  GLA^VILLE 

ions  and  customs  prevalent  in  different  lands  and 
ages  that  he  attempted  to  produce  the  impression  that 
there  was  nothing  fixed  and  certain  in  physics,  in 
logic,  in  matters  of  taste,  in  moral  and  religious  prac- 
tice, &c.  Yet,  although  nothing  has  been  more  varied 
and  conflicting  in  its  forms  than  religion,  he  repeat- 
edly declared  that  he  did  not  question  or  doubt  the 
religion  founded  on  revelation,  and  that  scepticism 
was  favourable  to  true  religion.  He  held  himself  to 
be  a  Christian  sceptic,  and  described  Saint  Paul  as 
another;  but  religion,  and  even  morality,  were  not 
conspicuous  either  in  his  character  or  writings/ 

The  worthy  English  divine  Joseph  Glanville 
(1636-1680),  author  of  Scepsis  Scientifica  and  other 
works,  ought  not,  I  think,  to  be  included  among  scep- 
tics. He  was  the  enemy  of  confident  dogmatising 
both  in  philosophy  and  in  theology :  he  was  the  advo- 
cate of  experimental  investigation  in  the  former  and 
of  the  moderate  doctrines  of  "  the  latitude  men  "  in 
the  latter.  But  in  neither  was  he  properly  speaking 
sceptical.  What  is  called  his  scepticism  is  little  more 
than  an  emphatic  dwelling  on  the  uncertainties  of 
what  passed  among  his  contemporaries  for  science. 
A  mere  enunciation  of  the  view  of  causality  so  effec- 
tively employed  by  Hume  in  the  interests  of  scep- 
ticism is  no  evidence  of  the  scepticism  of  one  who 
made  no  sceptical  application  of  it.^ 

•  As  regards  Le  Vayer  see  Owen  {Sk.  F.  R.,  ch.  t.),  and  L.  Eti- 
enne,  Essai  sur  la  Mothe  Le  Vayer,  1840. 

'  There  is  a  fine  and  just  estimate  of  Glanville's  character  and 
position  as  a  thinker  in  TuUoch's  Rational  Theology,  vol.  ii.  pp. 
443-452      See   also  Owen's  Introductory  Essay   to  his  edition  of 

•129 


HISTORY   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

Theological  agnosticism,  however,  was  advocated 
with  passionate  zeal  by  a  contemporary  of  Glanville, 
Jerome  Hirnhaim  (1687-1679),  a  dignitary  of  the 
Roman  Catholic  Church  in  Bohemia.  His  De  Typho 
Generis  Humani  (1676)  is  one  of  the  most  violent 
and  extreme  attacks  on  secular  science  and  natural 
reason.  The  validity  even  of  the  principles  of  caus- 
ality, identity,  and  contradiction  is  denied  in  it.  All 
human  knowledge  is  assumed  to  rest  on  the  testimony 
of  the  senses,  and  that  testimony  is  maintained  to  be 
proved  untrustworthy  by  experience  and  the  evi- 
dence of  faith.  The  dogma  of  creation  discredits  the 
maxim  ex  nihilo  nihil  fit.  The  Incarnation  shows 
that  the  belief  that  God  cannot  be  contained  in  a  body 
is  untrue.  Transubstantiation  disproves  the  princi- 
ple that  there  is  no  accident  without  a  substance.  The 
Word  of  God,  the  revelation  confided  to  the  care  of 
the  Church,  is  alone  certain ;  and  the  duty  of  man  is 
to  accept  it  with  entire  and  unquestioning  faith. 
Worldly  wisdom  and  science  are  error  and  vanity, 
and  ought  to  be  sacrificed  to  theology.  Divine  science. 
So  Hirnhaim  taught, — and  taught,  there  can  be  no 
doubt,  in  all  sincerity  and  with  excellent  intentions. 
Hirnhaim  reminds  us  in  various  respects  of  Lamen- 
nais  and  his  De  Typho  Generis  Humani  of  the  lat- 
ter's  Essai  sur  V  In  difference  en  matiere  de  religion.^ 

Glanville's  Scepsis  Scientifica,  Kegan  Paul,  1885.  Dr.  Ferris 
Greenslet's  Joseph  Glanville  (New  York,  1900)  is  a  comprehensive 
and  careful  study,  issued  by  the  Columbia  University,  and  published 
by  the  Macmillan  Company. 

'  C.  S.  Barach,  Hieronymus  Hirnfiaim,  Wien,  1864.    Hirnhaim's 
book  had  great  influence  in  Bohemia. 

130 


HUET 

Daniel  Peter  Huet  (1630-1721),  Bishop  of  Av- 
ranches,  was  a  much  more  widely  famed  representa- 
tive of  the  same  school  of  theological  thought.  He  was 
a  man  of  versatile  genius  and  vast  erudition,  and  the 
author  of  numerous  works  once  celebrated  and  still 
occasionally  consulted.  His  Demonstratio  Evangeli- 
ca,  1679,  and  his  Alnetanw  Qoestiones  de  Concordia 
Rationis  et  Fidel,  1690,  gave  him  a  high  reputation 
among  theologians,  notwithstanding  the  agnostic  as- 
sumptions and  conclusions  to  be  found  in  them.  In 
his  Traite  de  la  faiblesse  de  Vesprit  humain,  pub- 
lished posthumously  in  1723,  a  completely  Pyrrhon- 
istic  system  is  set  forth  and  advocated  in  the  interests 
of  religion.  In  opposition  to  the  methodical  doubt 
of  Descartes  he  contends  for  unlimited  doubt  of  nat- 
ural reason.  He  represents  the  writers  of  the  Bible 
and  the  Fathers  of  the  Church  as  cherishing  and  in- 
culcating such  doubt.  By  appealing  to  sundry  words 
of  Scripture,  and  by  dwelling  on  the  deceptions 
which  proceed  from  defects  in  the  senses  and  intel- 
lectual powers,  from  the  changes  in  things,  the  diversi- 
ties in  men,  the  want  of  a  certain  criterion  of  truth, 
the  fallacies  in  reasoning,  the  dissensions  of  dogma- 
tists, &c.,  he  endeavoured  to  prove  that  the  human  un- 
derstanding is  incapable  of  attaining  to  certainty  by 
the  exercise  of  its  natural  faculties.  Probability  suf- 
ficient to  direct  us  in  the  common  affairs  of  life  is, 
he  holds,  all  that  reason  can  give  us.  As  respects 
matters  of  philosophy  those  who  affirm  nothing  are 
alone  worthy  to  be  esteemed  philosophers.  The  "  art 
of  doubting"  should  be  cultivated  in  order  to  pre^ 

131 


HISTORY   OF   AGNOSTICISM 

pare  the  mind  to  receive  the  faith.  Certainty  can 
only  be  obtained  through  recourse  to  revelation  and 
grace  for  enlightenment  and  support.  The  best  foun- 
dation for  Catholic  theology  is  Pyrrhonic  philosophy. 
Thus  Huet  taught.^ 

Was  the  illustrious  Pascal  (1623-G2) — the  im- 
mortal author  of  the  Lettres  Provinciales  and  of  the 
Pensees — also  a  religious  sceptic  ?  The  question  has 
been  repeatedly  and  elaborately  discussed,  and  much 
unwillingness  has  been  shown  to  answer  it  in  the  af- 
firmative. It  seems  to  me  tliat  it  is  thus  that  it  must 
be  answered ;  and,  indeed,  that  Pascal  is  the  most 
striking  example  in  history  of  a  man  Christian  to  the 
core  and  yet  thoroughly  agnostic  in  his  estimate  of 
natural  reason.  Certainly  he  made  extraordinary  con- 
cessions to  the  most  absolute  scepticism  and  bestowed 
on  it  extravagant  praise.  He  declared  Pyrrhonism 
"  the  truth,"  Pyrrho  "  the  only  sage  before  Christ," 
and  that  "  to  mock  at  philosophy  is  truly  to  philoso- 
phise "  ;  and  although  he  affirmed  the  impossibility 
of  universal  doubt  he  said  nothing  against  its  reason- 
ableness, and  so  was  merely  sceptical  even  of  his  own 
scepticism.  In  dwelling  on  the  doctrine  of  the  Fall 
and  its  effects,  on  the  weaknesses  and  inconsistencies 
of  man,  on  the  variations  of  morality  and  kindred 
topics,  he  forgot  measure  and  proportion.  In  oppos- 
ing the  head  to  the  heart,  understanding  to  faith,  nat- 
ure to  grace,  he  made  sheer  and  violent  contrasts  of 

'  See  M.  Pattison's  Essays,  vol.  i.  ;  Joiirdain's  art  Iltiet  in 
Franck's  Did.  d.  Sc.ph.;  and  especially  C.  Bartlioliness,  Huet  ou 
(e  Scepticisme  theologique,  1850. 


PASCAL  AND   BAYLE 

wliat  ought  to  be  closely  conjoined.  Holding  that  so 
far  as  reason  is  concerned  there  are  equal  grovinds  for 
believing  and  disbelieving  in  the  existence  of  God, 
the  reality  of  moral  distinctions,  and  the  truth  of 
Christianity,  he  was  reduced  to  urge  that  men  should 
act  as  if  they  believed  in  them,  and  as  a  means  of  be- 
lieving in  them,  on  the  same  ground  that  a  gambler 
when  the  chances  are  visibly  or  demonstrably  equal 
bets  on  the  side  on  which  his  interests  lie ;  in  other 
words,  that  they  should  wager  on  the  side  of  God, 
virtue,  and  the  Gospel,  because  if  the  result  proves 
them  to  have  been  correct  their  gain  will  be  immense, 
whereas  if  it  should  turn  out  that  they  have  been  mis- 
taken their  loss  will  be  insignificant.  An  apologetic 
of  Christianity  rested  on  such  principles  as  those  in- 
dicated may  well  be  deemed  unsatisfactory.  It  does 
not  follow  that  Pascal  performed  no  great  service  as 
a  Christian  apologist.  In  reality,  he  rendered  by 
the  way  in  which  he  applied  in  the  Pen  sees  the  psy- 
chological or  experimental  method,  the  method  of 
spiritual  verification  to  the  probation  of  the  Chris- 
tian faith,  an  inestimable  service — one  which  fully 
justifies  his  being  regarded  as  one  of  the  most  original 
and  profound  of  Christian  apologists.^ 

Perhaps  the  most  influential  of  the  sceptics  of  the 
seventeenth  century  was  P'eter  Bayle  (1647-1706), 

'  For  the  affirmative  view  as  to  Pascal's  Scepticism  see  Cousin 
{Etudes  sur  Pascal)^  Saisset  {Le  Scepticisme),  and  Owen  {Sketpcis, 
&c.,  ch.  vi) ;  and  for  the  negative  view  Vinet  (Etudes  sur  Pascal) 
and  Droz  {Etude  sur  le  Scepticisme  de  Pascal).  See  also  TuUoch's 
Pascal,  1878,  and  Prof.  Grote's  Pascal  and  Montaigne,  '*Cont. 
Rev.j"  vol.  XXX  ,  July,  1877. 

133 


HISTORY   OF  AGNOSTICISM 

80  widely  known  by  his  Historical  and  Critical  Dic- 
tionary. The  relations  between  his  scepticism  and 
the  peculiarities  of  his  character,  the  tendencies  and 
controversies  of  his  age,  and  his  personal  experiences 
are  both  interesting  and  easily  traceable,  but  must 
be  left  by  us  unindicated.  lie  had  an  insatiable  and 
indiscriminate  curiosity  regarding  facts  and  opin- 
ions, wonderful  logical  dexterity,  extreme  ingenuity 
in  inventing  and  great  fondness  for  maintaining  par- 
adoxes, only  feeble  cravings  either  for  fixed  princi- 
ples or  for  unity  and  harmony  in  his  speculations,  a 
painful  want  of  moral  delicacy,  and  no  depth  of  re- 
ligious emotion.  His  strongest  passion  was  the  love 
of  toleration.  While  intellectually  honest  he  so  keen- 
ly enjoyed  discussion  for  its  own  sake  as  to  care  too 
little  whether  it  led  to  truth  or  not.  He  himself 
called  his  scepticism  "  historical  Pyrrhonism."  It 
is  commonly  known  as  "  erudite  scepticism."  The 
secret  of  it  consists  in  so  exhibiting  the  arguments  for 
and  against  all  opinions  as  to  leave  the  mind  puzzled 
and  perplexed,  and  with  neither  power  nor  desire  to 
form  a  decision. 

The  scepticism  of  Bayle  was  directed  even  more 
against  theological  than  against  philosophical  dog- 
mas. This  is  a  noteworthy  characteristic  of  it. 
Scepticism  is  seen  in  the  writings  of  Bayle  assuming 
that  especially  anti-religious  attitude  so  generally 
taken  by  it  in  the  eighteenth  and  nineteenth  centuries. 
Bayle  sought,  however,  partially  to  conceal  the  anti- 
religious  nature  of  his  scepticism  by  arguing  that 
faith  and  reason  are  contradictory,  and  therefore  it 

134 


BAYLE'S  AKGUMENTS 

does  not  follow  that  the  dogmas  of  faith  are  not  to  be 
believed  even  when  proved  irrational.  Even  in  that 
case  they  may  have  as  much  right  to  acceptance  as  the 
conclusions  of  reason.  Thus,  on  the  plea  of  the 
harmlessness  of  his  procedure,  Bayle  kept  constantly 
evolving  the  absurdities  which  he  supposed  to  be  im- 
plied in  the  doctrines  of  religion.  He  thereby 
brought  the  first  stage  of  the  movement  of  modern 
agnosticism  to  a  natural  close.  By  completing  it  he 
abolished  it.  By  generalising  its  arguments  he  made 
evident  the  futility  of  its  pretensions.  Without  pro- 
fessing to  do  anything  of  the  kind,  he  really  and  ef- 
fectively showed  how  delusive  was  the  notion  that 
religion  could  reasonably  hope  to  find  a  friend  in 
scepticism ;  how  mistaken  was  the  policy  of  an  al- 
liance of  religion  with  the  sense  of  doubt  or  nes- 
cience.^ 

'  See  D.  Stewart's  Dissertation^  pp.  313-324;  A.  Deschamps' 
Genese  du  Scepticisme  erudit  chez  Bayle ;  and  the  articles  of  M, 
Pillon  in  the  Annee  philosophique,  1895,  1896,  and  1897. 


135 


CHAPTER  IV 

AGNOSTICISM   OF    HUME   AND    KANT 

I.  hume:  prefatory  as  to  his  agnosticism 

The  agnosticism  of  the  present  day  flows  directly 
from  Hume  and  Kant  as  its  two  great  fountain-heads. 
Of  the  two  Kant  was  the  greater  philosopher  but  the 
lesser  agnostic.  He  surpassed  Hume  in  comprehen- 
sivenesSj  constructiveness,  inventiveness,  and  other 
qualities,  but  he  did  not  equal  him  in  critical  acute- 
ness  and  clearness ;  and,  one  single  feature  excepted, 
his  whole  agnosticism  may  be  found  more  sharply 
and  finely  delineated  in  the  writings  of  his  predeces- 
sor. Hume  is,  undoubtedly,  one  of  those  "  dead  but 
sceptred  sovereigns  who  still  rule  our  spirits  from 
their  urns "  ;  probably  he  is  of  all  the  eminent 
Scotchmen  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  one  who  has 
most  affected  the  general  course  and  character  of 
British  and  European  thought.  The  influence  of 
Adam  Smith,  as  the  author  of  the  Wealth  of  Nations, 
has  been  more  definite  and  visible,  but  also  narrower 
and  not  so  deep.  Carlyle  hardly  exaggerates  when 
he  speaks  of  him  as  "  the  true  intellectual  king  of  the 
eighteenth  century  "  ;  at  least  if  the  description  be 
understood  to  refer  not  so  much  to  his  direct  personal 
sway,  to  what  he  achieved  himself  or  to  the  number 

136 


HUME'S   INFLUENCE 

of  adherents  and  disciples  he  gained,  but  to  his  indi- 
rect influence,  to  what  he  stimulated  or  compelled 
others  to  do,  what  he  brought  to  an  end  and  caused  to 
be  begun. 

And  his  influence,  viewed  as  a  whole,  may  reason- 
ably be  held  to  have  been  decidedly  for  good.  Inci- 
dental and  immediate  evils  of  a  kind  it  no  doubt  had. 
If  the  shaking  of  an  unquestioning  faith  be  essentially 
evil,  his  whole  mode  of  theorising  must  have  been 
evil.  But  if  such  shaking  be  far  more  a  good  than 
an  evil,  any  evil  Hume  did  must  have  been  slight 
compared  with  the  eventual  good  which  he  brought 
about.  It  is  manifest  that  the  latter  supposition  is 
the  true  one,  and  the  one  which  facts  have  confirmed. 
It  was  absolutely  necessary  that  the  questions  which 
he  raised  as  to  the  grounds  or  bases  both  of  knowl- 
edge and  of  religion  should  be  put,  and  that  in  the  un- 
impassioned  and  searching  way  in  which  he  put  them. 
It  was  an  essential  condition  of  the  new  departure 
which  was  needed  both  in  philosophy  and  in  theology 
that  the  doubts  which  he  suggested  as  to  the  very 
foundations  of  both  should  be  propounded,  and  that 
by  a  powerful  and  constitutionally  sceptical  intellect. 
The  time  called  for  the  man;  the  man  was  exactly 
suited  to  meet  a  want  of  the  time.  The  sceptic 
and  the  dogmatist  are  alike  the  instruments  of  prov- 
idence. 

Authors  like  Huxley  in  England,  Riehl  in  Ger- 
many, and  Compayre  in  France  have  given  us  expo- 
sitions of  Hume's  philosophy  in  which  they  have  ig- 
nored this  aspect  of  it,  or  rather  this  the  very  essence 

137 


AGNOSTICISM    OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

of  it ;  have  actually  been  unable  to  see  any  scepticism 
at  all  in  the  theorisings  of  Hume.  How  happens  it 
that  men  so  able  have  given  us  such  a  misrepresenta- 
tion, or  at  least  one-sided  representation  of  his  doc- 
trine ?  Partly,  must  be  the  answer,  because  Hume 
really  was  a  pioneer  of  experimental  science,  in  which 
capacity  Huxley  admirably  delineates  him ;  a  precur- 
sor of  the  Critical  Philosophy,  as  Rielil  maintains; 
and  to  a  large  extent  a  positivist,  as  shown  by  Com- 
payre.  Experimentalism,  epistemological  criticism, 
and  positivism  neither  exclude  one  another  nor  agnos- 
ticism, and  they  all  coexisted  with  agnosticism  in  the 
mind  of  Hume,  and  coexist  with  it  in  his  writings.  It 
was  thus  rendered  possible  to  study  Hume  so  one- 
sidedly  as  to  overlook  his  scepticism.  But  the  main 
reason  why  the  writers  referred  to  have  actually  so 
erred-  is  that  they  have  substantially  adopted  his  phil- 
osophical principles  without  seeing  the  full  bearing  of 
them  as  regards  the  validity  of  knowledge  and  the  suf- 
ficiency of  science.  Because  they  have  not  seen  how 
deep  in  their  reach  and  wide  in  their  range  the  scepti- 
cal consequences  of  his  principles  were,  they  have  sup- 
posed that  he  had  not  seen  it.  That  is  a  huge  mis- 
take on  their  part.  It  is  a  historical  fact  that  he  did 
see  it,  and  logically  certain  that  in  so  seeing  he  saw 
truly. 

The  agnosticism  of  Hume  was  of  the  very  essence 
of  his  philosophy,  and  his  philosophy  was  the  natural 
outcome  of  a  kind  of  philosophy  which  preceded  it. 
His  agnosticism,  in  other  words,  had  for  its  basis 
modern  philosophy  so  far  as  modern  philosophy  had 

138 


HUME'S   PREDECESSORS 

been  agnostic  in  tendency.  In  that  lay  to  a  great  ex- 
tent the  significance  and  importance  of  it.  It  was 
not  merely  the  scepticism  of  an  individual  thinker: 
it  was  a  scepticism  which  had  been  present  and  oper- 
ative in  the  speculations  of  some  generations  of 
thinkers,  although  it  had  not  previously  shown  itself 
in  its  full  force  and  in  the  light  of  open  day.  Hume 
evolved  and  gave  admirable  expression  to  the  scepti- 
cism latent  in  the  empirical  or  sensationist  philosophy 
which,  gradually  acquiring  strength  from  the  days  of 
Lord  Bacon  downwards,  was  to  become  for  a  time 
the  ruling  power  in  all  departments  of  thought  and 
life. 

The  philosophers  to  whom  he  owed  most  were  the 
ancient  •  sceptics,  and  Bacon,  Locke,  and  Berkeley. 
Like  draws  to  like ;  and  there  is  abundance  of  evi- 
dence, although  Hume  seldom  makes  quotations,  that 
at  an  early  period  of  his  philosophical  studies  he  had 
made  himself  well  acquainted — either  at  first  or  sec- 
ond hand — with  the  arguments  and  topics  of  the  scep- 
tical schools  of  the  ancient  world.  The  Academica, 
De  Natura  Deorum,  Disputationes  Tusculanw,  &c.,  of 
Cicero,  his  favourite  prose  classic,  may  safely  be 
held  to  have,  from  the  first  awakening  of  literary  am- 
bition within  him,  influenced  his  mode  of  thought  as 
well  as  his  style  of  expression.  His  method  of  inves- 
tigation was  sincerely  meant  to  be  experimental  and 
Baconian,  whether  or  not  it  was  really  so.  Locke 
made  him  a  psychologist.  His  theory  of  knowledge 
was  a  simplification  of  that  of  Locke :  in  a  multitude 
of  instances  he  reajied  what  Locke  had  sown.     From 

139 


AGNOSTICISM    OF   HUME   AND   KANT 

Berkeley  he  derived  liis  views  of  abstraction,  of  the 
distinction  between  primary  and  secondary  qualities, 
of  the  hyjx)thetical  character  of  substance,  &c.  The 
scepticism  which  Berkeley  had  applied  to  the  outer 
world  of  matter  Hume  supplemented  and  completed 
by  applying  a  like  scepticism  to  the  inner  world  of 
mind.  With  the  spirit  of  religious  doubt  so  preva- 
lent in  the  contemporary  literature  and  society  of 
France  he  was  intimately  in  sympathy. 

When  first  propounded  the  most  distinctive  feature 
of  his  agnosticism  was  its  claim  to  be  wholly  founded 
on  experimental  psychology.  It  was  the  character  of 
its  connection  with  psychology — inductive  mental  sci- 
ence— which  gave  it  its  originality,  its  influence,  and 
such  worth  as  it  possessed.  Had  the  psychology 
with  which  it  was  associated  been  as  true  as  its  con- 
nection therewith  was  firm  and  natural,  agnosticism 
would  have  achieved  a  decisive  victory.  This,  how- 
ever, was  not  the  case;  and,  accordingly,  instead  of 
Hume's  psychology  proving  his  agnosticism,  his  ag- 
nosticism became  the  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  his 
psychology,  and  of  all  psychology  of  the  same  kind, — 
every  merely  sensationist  psychology.  We  are  not  to 
suppose  that  he  himself  desired  or  meant  it  to  be  so. 
He  is  not  to  be  thought  of  as  starting  with  a  convic- 
tion of  the  insufficiency  of  the  principles  he  adopted, 
and  then  labouring  to  make  their  insufficiency  appar- 
ent by  exhibiting  the  consequences  to  which  they  led. 
He  accepted  his  principles  in  perfect  good  faith,  see- 
ing no  others  which  seemed  to  him  so  good.  When 
he  began  to  form  a  system  they  were  those  generally 

140 


HUME'S   THEORY   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

accepted,  and  the  only  ones  on  which  he  thought  he 
could  found  it.  After  he  had  constructed  it,  and  seen 
all  that  he  could  make  of  them,  he  remained  unable 
to  detect  where  they  were  at  fault,  and  certainly  un- 
prepared to  abandon  them,  although  he  made  no 
attempts  to  defend  them,  and  was  very  indulgent 
towards  those  who  attacked  them.  What  was  the 
extent  of  his  faith  in  them  is  never  likely  to  be 
determined,  but  the  kind  or  quality  of  it  was  obvi- 
ously very  appropriate  to  an  agnostic.  His  merit 
was  that,  having  adopted  the  principles  of  a  merely 
empirical  philosophy,  he  tried  with  rare  skill  and 
j^rfect  dispassionateness  to  bring  out  of  them  all 
that  was  in  them,  and  only  what  was  in  them; 
saw  what  that  was  with  a  clearness  which  has 
never  been  surpassed ;  and  did  not  attempt  to  conceal 
either  from  himself  or  others  what  it  was — namely, 
not  a  satisfactory  explanation  of  the  world  or  a  satis- 
factory foundation  of  science  or  conduct,  but  an  indi- 
cation that  knowledge  is  unattainable,  the  world  an 
inexplicable  enigma,  and  the  state  of  man  whimsically 
absurd. 

The  theory  of  knowledge  adopted  by  Hume  was, 
as  I  have  said,  a  simplification  of  that  of  Locke.  Ac- 
cording to  both  Locke  and  Hume,  all  our  knowledge 
is  derived  from  experience,  and  experience  consists 
of  particular  states  of  mind  which  presuppose  no 
necessary  conditions  or  elements  of  cognition.  The 
states  which  compose  experience — the  contents  of  con- 
sciousness— are  reduced  by  Locke  to  two  kinds, — 
those  which  are  given  to  us  through  the  external 

141 


AGNOSTICISM    OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

sense,  and  those  which  are  given  to  us  through  the 
soul's  internal  sense  of  its  own  operations ;  or,  as  he 
designates  them,  to  ideas  of  sensation  and  ideas  of  re- 
flection. What  Locke  calls  ideas  Hume  calls  percep- 
tions; and  perceptions — i.e.^  m3ntal  states  of  every 
kind — he  reduces  to  impressions  and  ideas, — impres- 
sions being  all  those  states  which  are  produced  in  sen- 
sation, and  ideas  being  the  copies  or  images  which  the 
mind  takes  of  them  in  thinking  and  reasoning.  Im- 
pressions precede  ideas,  being  the  originals  from 
which  the  latter  are  taken ;  and  they  are  as  a  rule  more 
forcible  and  lively.  Impressions  and  ideas  diifer, 
however,  only  in  degree — only  in  strength  and  vivac- 
ity. The  theory  thus  virtually  is  that  all  mental 
states  may  be  analysed  into  mere  sensations.  What 
are  called  ideas  are  represented  as  not  essentially  dis- 
tinct from  what  are  impressions,  and  should  in  con- 
sistency have  been  reduced  to  impressions,  or,  in  other 
words,  to  sensations,  as  these  are  the  only  original  im- 
pressions. Given  sensations,  and  we  should  be  able, 
according  to  the  philosophical  theory  espoused  by 
Hume,  to  explain  how  all  knowledge,  all  minds,  and 
the  whole  knowable  universe  have  been  formed  out  of 
them. 

The  theory  is  of  an  attractive  but  delusive  simplic- 
ity. It  includes,  however,  all  that  is  essential  in  the 
creed  of  a  self-con  si  stent  empiricism ;  and  Hume's 
great  merit  was  that,  having  adopted  it,  he  was  so 
true  to  it,  and  so  courageously  evolved  what  it  im- 
plied. It  was  most  desirable  that  there  should  be  a 
clear  exhibition  of  the  consequences  which  naturally 

143 


HUME'S  SENSATIONISM 

follow  from  the  hypothesis  that  all  the  contents  of 
consciousness  may  be  traced  back  to  and  resolved  into 
sensations,  and  that  thoughtful  men  should  thus  be 
compelled  to  perceive  that  the  path  along  which  an 
empirical  philosophy  sought  to  lead  the  human  mind 
was  one  which  must  bring  it  to  a  bottomless  abyss. 
That  service  Hume  thoroughly  accomplished.  Grant 
him  his  primary  psychological  assumptions,  which 
are  only  those  which  every  consistent  and  coherent 
form  of  empirical  agnosticism  must  assume,  and  the 
most  sweeping  of  his  agnostic  inferences  plainly 
follow. 


II.   HUME  S  AGNOSTICISM  IN  GENERAL 

Let  us  glance  at  some  of  those  consequences  of 
Hume's  assumptions  as  to  the  origin  and  composition 
of  experience  in  which  the  scepticism  of  his  doctrine 
consists. 

One  of  the  most  obvious  is  that  there  can  be  no  such 
thing  as  knowledge  at  all.  That  all  our  knowledge  is 
reducible  to  impressions  and  ideas  means  with  Hume, 
as  it  must  mean  with  every  person  who  expresses  his 
thought  correctly  in  those  terms,  that  we  can  have  no 
knowledge  of  other  things  than  impressions  and  ideas ; 
no  knowledge  of  an  objective  world,  of  a  personal  self, 
or  of  a  Supreme  Being ;  no  knowledge  of  any  kind  of 
real  existence.  But  no  knowledge  of  reality  is  equiv- 
alent to  no  real  knowledge.  Hence  the  problem  of 
psychology  thus  viewed  is  not  that  of  explaining  how 
impressions  and  ideas  come  to  be  a  knowledge  of  real 

143 


AGNOSTICISM   OF  HTTME  AKD   KANT 

persons  and  objects,  but  how  they  come  to  be  taken, 
or  rather  mistaken,  for  such  knowledge.  And  that 
was  the  problem  Hume  grappled  with.  He  asserted 
that  we  have  no  knowledge  or  experience  except  what 
is  composed  of  states  of  consciousness ;  that  the  only 
components  of  consciousness  are  sensations  and  ideas 
(their  copies)  ;  that  the  belief  in  realities  beyond 
consciousness,  to  which  impressions  and  ideas  corre- 
spond, has  no  discoverable  foundation ;  and  that,  con- 
sequently, all  that  mental  science  can  be  expected  to 
do  is  to  explain  how  mere  states  of  mind  come  to  ap- 
pear to  be  a  world  of  objects,  and  how  the  erroneous 
belief  that  we  have  a  knowledge  of  external  realities 
— or,  in  other  words,  that  our  supposed  knowledge  of 
them  is  knowledge  and  not  illusion — takes  irresistible 
possession  of  us.  This  is  all  that  Hume  has  at- 
tempted to  do  as  regards  external  realities.  He  has 
not  sought  to  show  that  there  are  or  are  not  such  real- 
ities as  material  objects,  but  to  show  how,  through 
the  influence  of  custom  on  transient  but  recurrent 
sense-impressions,  a  belief  which  has  no  real  or  ra- 
tional warrant  in  the  existence  of  such  objects  may 
be  imagined  to  have  grown  up.  Thus  Hume  would 
destroy  the  world  of  the  ordinary  man,  of  the  mate- 
rialist, and  of  the  realist.  Having  reduced  knowl- 
edge to  the  sense-impressions  and  traces  or  images  of 
them  in  individual  minds,  he  makes  it  apparent  that 
whatever  may  be  fancied  to  lie  beyond  those  subjec- 
tive individual  states  nothing  can  be  seen  or  known 
beyond  them.  His  sensationism  thus  at  once  reveals 
itself  as  subjective  idealism  or  illusionism,  and  at 

144 


HUME'S  THEORY  EXAMINED 

every  onward  step  more  fully  so,  until  it  stands  dis- 
closed as  perhaps  the  conipletest  example  of  such  a 
philosophy  which  has  ever  appeared. 

According  to  Hume  we  do  not  know  external  reali- 
ties. Does  he  allow  that  we  can  have  a  real  knowl- 
edge of  ourselves  ?  N^o.  What  he  affirms  is  that  the 
mind  can  know  nothing  except  its  own  states.  Hence 
it  follows  that  it  cannot  know  external  reality.  But 
it  equally  follows,  as  Hume  rightly  perceives,  that  it 
cannot  know  internal  reality — i.e.,  its  own  self. 
There  can,  indeed,  be  no  internal  reality  in  a  mind 
of  which  the  only  constituents  are  mere  states,  no 
knowledge  of  self  in  a  consciousness  composed  exclu- 
sively of  series  or  groups  of  mere  impressions.  Hume 
does  not  deny  that  we  naturally  come  to  think  of  and 
believe  in  what  we  call  the  mind  or  self  as  an  indivis- 
ible, permanent,  and  active  principle  or  subject  pres- 
ent in  its  states ;  but  he  maintains  that  we  are  not  enti- 
tled so  to  think  or  believe,  and  that  such  an  idea  of 
mind  or  self  is  a  "  fiction  "  of  the  imagination.  Of 
course  there  can  be  no  knowledge  of  the  reality  of 
what  has  no  reality.  But,  it  may  be  said,  he  express- 
ly allows  that  the  mind  can  know  its  own  states,  al- 
though only  its  own  states.  That  is  true.  But  the 
admission  certainly  does  not  come  to  much.  For 
there  is,  in  the  first  place,  the  difficulty  of  understand- 
ing how  "  a  fiction  "  can  either  have  "  states  "  or 
"  know "  them.  And,  waiving  that  difficulty  as 
much  too  large  a  subject  for  treatment  here,  there  is, 
in  the  second  place,  the  very  obvious  fact  that  what 
Hume  allows  the  mind  may  know  is  just  what  it  can- 

145 


AGNOSTICISM   OF  HUME  AND  KANT 

not  possibly  know.  The  mind  cannot  know  only  its 
own  states.  It  cannot  know  them  unless  as  relating 
to  something.  It  cannot  know  them  without  at  least 
also  knowing  itself.  x\long  with,  or  rather  as  correla- 
tive with,  whatever  is  known,  self  or  the  ego  is  also 
known — is  the  simplest  and  most  indubitable  condi- 
tion of  knowledge.  It  is  a  law  without  which  con- 
sciousness is  inconceivable,  knowledge  impossible; 
and  yet  Hume  will  only  grant  us  a  consciousness  of 
which  every  state,  a  knowledge  of  which  every  act,  so 
contradicts  this  law  as  to  be  an  unthinkable  absurdity. 
In  a  word,  he  does  away  with  all  that  can  properly  be 
spoken  of  as  a  knowledge  of  mind,  and  allows  us  to 
retain  as  such  only  what  is  manifestly  unworthy  of 
the  name. 

The  character  of  Hume's  theory  of  knowledge 
shows  itself  in  its  true  and  clearest  light  when  applied 
to  substances,  whether  things  or  persons.  It  resolves 
them  all  into  less  than  dust  and  ashes,  for  even  in  dust 
and  ashes  there  is  something  of  reality,  of  being, 
of  conceivability,  whereas  the  elements  into  which 
Hume  resolves  all  substances  are  the  mere  illusions  of 
dreams  which  have  no  dreamers.  Substances — all 
things  which  claim  and  seem  to  be  existences — he 
holds  are  simply  products  of  association  and  imagi- 
nation. In  his  own  words,  a  substance  is  "  a  collec- 
tion of  ideas,  that  are  united  by  the  imagination  and 
have  a  particular  name  assigned  them,  by  which  we 
are  able  to  recall  either  to  ourselves  or  others  that  col- 
lection." Now,  strange  as  such  a  view  may  seem  to 
one  who  is  unacquainted  with  the  history  of  philoso- 


ITS  APPLICATION  TO   SUBSTANCES 

phy,  even  such  an  one  may,  perhaps,  without  diffi- 
culty see  that  Hume  could  not  have  consistently  sup- 
posed substances  to  be  more  than  he  has  defined  them 
to  be ;  that  his  hypothesis  as  to  experience  being  com- 
pletely analysable  into  sensations  logically  precluded 
his  attributing  to  them  any  kind  of  external  reality, 
independent  existence,  permanency,  self-hood  or  the 
like.  Indeed,  even  Hume  here  went  further  than  he 
was  entitled  to  go.  For,  while  it  is  clear  that  if  all 
that  can  be  known  may  be  resolved  into  states  of  mind, 
all  that  is  known  must  consist  of  states  of  mind,  and 
all  so-called  substances  or  things  must  be  merely  col- 
lections of  states  of  mind  although  they  are  imagined 
to  be  of  a  very  different  nature,  it  is  very  far  from 
clear  how  states  or  j^erceptions  which  have  neither 
subject  nor  object — which  are  originally  separate,  suc- 
cessive, and  in  perpetual  flux — can  be  collected.  As 
nothing  is  supposed  to  exist  save  themselves,  it  would 
seem  to  follow  that  they  must  form  themselves  into 
those  collections  of  ideas  which  are  mistaken  for  sub- 
stances. Hume  has  not  explained  himself  on  that 
]X)int.  Certainly  he  has  not  made  ovit  that  any  such 
wondrous  feat  was  accomplished  by  mere  series  of 
transient  sensations  as  gathering  and  grouping  them- 
selves into  what  men  call  their  bodies  and  minds,  the 
ocean,  the  earth,  and  the  starry  heavens. 

But  he  applied  his  agnosticism  as  to  substances  in 
all  directions.  Thus  he  sought  to  convict  material 
substances  of  non-existence.  Berkeley  had  already 
resolved  matter  into  phenomena  dependent  on  the  ac- 
tion and  perception  of  mind,  and  maintained  it  to  be 

147 


AGNOSTICISM    OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

essentially  nothing  more  than  the  sum  of  its  appear- 
ances to  sense.  But  although  he  thus  exhibited  the 
material  imiverse  as  merely  phenomenal,  he  did  not 
exhibit  it  as  objectively  unreal.  He  filled  Up  the  void 
left  by  the  abstraction  of  material  substance  with 
active  mind.  What  we  call  physical  phenomena  he 
ascribed  to  the  impressions  and  suggestions  of  the 
Divine  Spirit  on  the  spirit  of  man ;  and  all  the  math- 
ematical relations  and  natural  laws  of  the  universe 
he  represented  as  simply  manifestations  of  the  Su- 
preme Intelligence.  Hume  cordially  assented  to  his 
reasoning  so  far  as  it  led  to  a  purely  negative  result — 
the  elimination  of  "  material  substance  "  ;  but  he  de- 
cidedly rejected  what  was  positive  in  its  conclusion — 
the  reference  of  sense-appearances  to  the  energy  and 
operation  of  Deity  as  their  true  and  sole  source. 
That  he  pronounced  a  view  "  too  bold  ever  to  carry 
conviction  with  it  to  a  man  suiRciently  apprised  of 
the  weakness  of  human  reason  and  the  narrow  limits 
to  which  it  is  confined."  Yet  the  view  which  he  sub- 
stituted for  it  was,  in  reality,  far  bolder.  It  was  that 
the  whole  material  universe  and  all  its  contents,  as 
apiDrehended  by  each  individual,  is  the  creation  of 
that  individual's  imagination  and  affected  by  the  hy- 
postatising  of  impressions  impressed  by  nothing  ob- 
jective on  nothing  subjective.  Hume  explicitly  and 
completely  accepted  this  view,  pronouncing  external- 
ity a  fiction  due  to  association,  and  arguing  that  space 
and  time  are  mere  ideas  which  imply  nothing  exter- 
nal or  real.  The  hypothesis  of  Berkeley  is  a  timid 
and  cautious  one  if  compared  with  the  one  which 

148 


HUME   ON   CONSCIOUSNESS  OF  SELF 

Hume  would  have  us  accept  as  si^ecially  in  accord- 
ance with  the  feebleness  and  narrowness  of  our  rea- 
sons. The  boldness  of  the  idealistic  theologian  has 
often  been  thus  exceeded  by  the  professed  modesty  of 
the  empiricistic  sceptic. 

Hume  took  a  still  bolder  step.  It  was  one  which 
Berkeley  saw  might  be  made,  on  the  supposition  that 
the  denial  of  spiritual  substance  followed  naturally 
from  the  same  principles  which  had  led  himself  to 
the  denial  of  material  substance.  He  protested, 
however,  against  its  being  taken  on  the  ground  that 
we  are  conscious  of  our  own  being  but  not  of  the  ex- 
istence or  essence  of  matter.  Hume  paid  no  atten- 
tion to  the  protest,  and  treated  mind  just  as  he  had 
treated  matter.  "  What  we  call  mind,"  he  says,  "  is 
nothing  but  a  heap  or  collection  of  impressions  united 
together  by  certain  relations,  and  supposed,  though 
falsely,  to  be  endowed  with  a  perfect  simplicity  and 
identity."  The  apj)eal  to  consciousness,  he  main- 
tains, fails  to  assure  us  of  the  existence  of  any  minds 
or  selves  which  are  not  such  mere  heaps  or  collections 
of  impressions.  And,  of  course,  it  is  not  directly  ap- 
plicable to  any  mind  or  self  save  one's  own.  Hume 
himself,  however,  showed  forgetfulness  of  the  bear- 
ing of  this  fact  when  he  wrote :  "  I  venture  to  affirm 
of  the  rest  of  mankind  that  they  are  nothing  but  a 
bimdle  or  collection  of  different  perceptions  which 
succeed  each  other  with  an  inconceivable  rapidity  and 
are  in  a  perpetual  flux  and  movement.  .  .  .  There 
is  properly  no  simplicity  in  it  [the  mind]  at  one  time, 
nor  identity  in  different:  whatever  natural  propen- 

149 


AGNOSTICISM    OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

sion  we  may  have  to  imagine  that  simplicity  and 
identity." 

Hume  was  not  entitled  to  affirm  this  of  the  rest  of 
mankind  until  they  had  affirmed  it  of  themselves. 
His  inability  to  see  in  other  men  more  than  such 
bundles  as  he  describes  could  only  be  a  proof  of  the 
defectiveness  of  his  vision  if  they  recognised  in  them- 
selves the  unity  and  permanency,  the  self -identity, 
self-consciousness,  and  self-activity  which  he  denied 
to  them.  He  could  only  express  directly  the  testi- 
mony of  his  own  consciousness. 

That  he  has  attempted  to  do,  and  in  doing  so  he  has 
boldly  ventured  to  deny  his  having  any  consciousness 
of  a  self.  "  For  my  part,"  he  writes,  "  when  I  enter 
most  intimately  into  what  I  call  myself,  I  always 
stumble  on  some  particular  conception  or  other — of 
heat  or  cold,  light  or  shade,  love  or  hatred,  pain  or 
pleasure.  I  never  can  catch  myself  at  any  time  with- 
out a  perception,  and  never  can  observe  anything  but 
the  perception."  Can  this  statement,  however,  be 
accepted  ?  Manifestly  not,  for  it  is  wholly  self  con- 
tradictory. It  implicitly  affirms  what  it  expressly 
denies,  and  implicitly  denies  what  it  expressly  af- 
firms. "  When  I  enter  into  myself  I  always  stumble 
on  some  particular  perception."  Granted ;  but  then 
in  every  such  case  you  are  there  as  well  as  the  percep- 
tion. "  I  never  catch  myself  at  any  time  without  a 
perception."  Nobody  supposes  you  do,  but  do  you 
not  catch  yourself  with  your  perceptions?  "  /  never 
can  observe  anything  but  the  perception."  Oh,  but 
that  is  incorrect  even  according  to  your  own  account, 

150 


HUME   ON  CAUSALITY 

seeing  that  you  say  it  is  you  who  observe  the  percep- 
tion. Whoever  perceives  catches  himself  perceiving, 
and  therefore  himself  along  with  the  j^erception.  He 
never  finds  a  mere  perception  any  more  than  a  mere 
self  in  his  experience.  Hence  Hume  might  as  well 
have  denied  his  perceptions  as  his  self — only  in  that 
case,  as  he  allowed  of  nothing  but  perceptions,  he 
would  have  had  nothing  whatever  either  on  which  to 
base  or  with  which  to  build  up  his  philosophy.  In'  a 
word,  what  Hume  tries  to  represent  as  the  testimony 
of  his  consciousness  is  at  this  point  so  preposterously 
sceptical  that  his  language  refuses  to  convey  it. 
Could  any  human  language  have  given  to  it  a  self- 
consistent  expression  ? 

Maintaining  that  mind  was  nothing  but  series  or 
collections  of  transient  perceptions,  Hume  could  not, 
of  course,  allow  that  a  Supreme  Mind  would  supply 
any  ground  of  unity  or  permanence  in  the  universe. 
Mind  was,  according  to  him,  as  devoid  of  unity  and 
permanence  as  matter.  If,  however,  material  objects 
and  human  minds  alike  are  nothing  but  so  many  bun- 
dles of  particular  perceptions,  any  difficulties  which 
we  may  have  as  to  the  possibility  and  intelligibility 
of  these  bundles  will  not  be  removed  by  reference  to 
a  bundle  called  the  Supreme  Mind. 

The  scepticism  of  Hume  does  not  spare  even  math- 
ematics. He  perceived  that  it  could  not  consistently 
confine  itself  to  what  professed  to  be  physical,  men- 
tal, or  theological  science.  From  mere  sensations  it 
is  impossible  to  derive  the  universal  ideas  on  which 
necessary  and  exact  deductions  are  dependent.     If 

151 


AGNOSTICISM    OF  HUME  AND   KANT 

all  knowledge  be  reducible  to  contingent  and  particu- 
lar sensations,  one  can  establish  no  right  to  lay  down 
any  proposition  as  an  axiom — as  necessarily  and 
universally  true.  Hume  saw  this,  and  therefore  de- 
scribed even  geometry  as  only  approximately  true. 
"  When  geometry,"  he  says,  "  decides  anything  con- 
cerning the  proportions  of  quantity,  we  ought  not  to 
look  for  the  utmost  precision  and  exactness.  None 
of  its  proofs  extend  so  far.  It  takes  the  dimensions 
and  proportions  of  figures  justly,  but  roughly,  and 
with  some  liberty.  Its  errors  are  never  considerable, 
nor  would  it  err  at  all  did  it  not  aspire  to  such  abso- 
lute perfection."  Such  a  view  of  the  nature  of  math- 
ematical science  is  a  fair  inference  from  Hume's 
theory  of  knowledge,  yet  to  have  drawn  it  is  a  proof 
of  his  candour,  since  he  could  not  have  failed  to  an- 
ticipate that  his  readers  would  generally  regard  it  as 
a  reason  for  rejecting  any  theory  or  philosophy  which 
implied  it. 

Our  author's  views  as  to  causality  were,  perhaps, 
those  which  attracted  most  attention.  They  are  thor- 
oughly characteristic  of  his  agnosticism.  He  admits 
that  we  believe  that  every  object  which  begins  to  ex- 
ist must  have  a  cause ;  he  allows  that  in  this  our  nat- 
ural belief  the  idea  of  necessary  connection  is  in- 
volved ;  and  he  elaborately  shows  that  the  belief  is  the 
foundation  of  all  other  beliefs  and  inferences  as  to 
matters  of  fact.  His  agnosticism,  in  a  word,  does  not 
show  itself  in  denial  of  the  idea  or  belief,  but  in  the 
full  admission  of  its  existence  and  an  emphatic  in- 
sistence on  its  importance  conjoined  with  a  strenuous 

152 


HIS  VIEW  AS  TO   CAUSALITY 

contention  that  it  has  no  warrant  either  in  sense  or 
reason.  He  could  have  had  no  objection  to  any  one 
referring  it  to  instinct,  for  if  all  our  reasoning  as  to 
matters  of  fact  be  dependent  on  an  irrational  instinct 
it  must,  of  course,  be  itself  irrational,  and  that  was 
just  what  Hume  held.  Pie  could  not  have  admitted 
that  it  was  any  refutation  of  him  to  insist  on  the  ap- 
parent universality  and  necessity  of  the  belief, 
for  unless  it  were  seemingly  universal  and  neces- 
sary he  could  not  infer  it  to  be  an  invariable 
and  constitutional  illusion  of  the  human  mind. 
What  he  applied  himself  to  establish  was  that 
for  the  sense  of  universality  and  necessity  insep- 
arable from  the  belief  in  causality  no  justifica- 
tion was  to  be  found  either  in  reason  or  experience; 
that  the  only  ground  for  it  and  for  all  the  reasonings 
and  conclusions  dependent  on  it  is  custom  or  associa- 
tion,— a  repetition  of  successive  impressions  which 
produces  in  us  the  delusion  that  one  always  is  and 
always  must  be  the  cause  of  the  other,  and  even 
the  delusion  that  every  change,  or  event  must  have 
a  cause.  "  After  a  repetition  of  similar  instances, 
the  mind  is  carried  by  habit,  upon  the  appear- 
ance of  an  event,  to  expect  its  usual  attendant, 
and  to  believe  that  it  will  exist.  The  connection 
which  we  feel  in  the  mind,  this  customary  transition 
of  the  imagination  from  one  object  to  its  usual  attend- 
ant, is  the  sentiment  or  impression  from  which  we 
form  the  idea  of  power  or  necessary  connection. 
Xothing  farther  is  in  the  case."  Yet,  according  to 
Hume,  the  causal  belief,  although  only  "  the  offspring 

163 


AGNOSTICISM    OF  HUME  AND   KANT 

of  experience  engendered  by  custom,"  is  the  source  of 
all  orderly  and  developed  experience;  the  principle 
on  which  it  is  built  up;  the  foundation  of  all  reason- 
ing regarding  empirical  objects,  the  only  objects  to 
which  in  his  opinion  reasoning  is  at  all  applicable. 
In  other  words,  he  represents  the  very  basis  of  all 
seemingly  intelligible  experience  as  an  illusion,  and 
its  contents  when  analysed  as  devoid  of  a  single  ele- 
ment of  rationality. 

Hume's  general  theory  of  belief  is  not  less  sceptical 
than  his  theory  of  the  causal  belief.  Belief  is  of  its 
very  nature  a  protest  against  scepticism,  and  the  scep- 
tic, in  order  to  vindicate  his  own  consistency,  must 
explain  the  true  nature  of  it  away.  This  Hume  at- 
tempted. He  represented  belief  as  less  akin  to  judg- 
ment than  to  imagination,  and  as  indeed  only  an 
intenser  and  livelier  form  of  imagination.  He  distin- 
guished belief  from  imagination  not  by  what  really 
differentiates  them — the  fact  that  the  former  does  and 
the  latter  does  not  imply  a  real  or  supiwsed  apprehen- 
sion of  truth — but  by  the  greater  vivacity  and  force 
of  the  former  as  compared  with  the  latter.  He  thus 
implicitly  denied  belief  to  be  what  it  really  is,  and 
ignored  the  numerous  instances  in  which  it  is  weaker 
and  less  vivid  than  imagination ;  but,  unquestionably, 
if  he  had  been  able  to  substantiate  his  theory  of  belief 
he  would  have  gained  a  decisive  victory  for  his  scep- 
ticism. 

The  agnosticism  of  Hume,  so  far  as  it  has  up  to 
this  point  been  before  us,  must  be  admitted  to  be  both 
radical   and   consistent.     Thoroughness   is   its   most 

154 


HUME'S   BELIEF  AND   SPECULATIONS 

manifest  cliaracteristic.  It  goes  straight  to  the  very- 
bases  of  belief,  to  the  ultimate  foundations  of  knowl- 
edge, and  does*  not  shrink  to  draw  from  its  premisses 
their  natural  inferences  even  when  most  likely  to 
cause  unrest  and  alarm.  And  in  this  lies  its  chief 
merit,  and  the  reason  why  it  has  exerted  so  great  an 
influence  as  it  has  done  on  the  development  of  philos- 
ophy and  of  thought  in  general.  It  compelled  phi- 
losophers to  concern  themselves  anew  and  earnestly 
with  the  deepest  and  most  essential  questions  intelli- 
gence can  raise,  and  to  seek  clearness  and  certainty  as 
to  the  conditions  which  underlie  all  investigations  and 
must  determine  the  worth  of  all  the  efforts  of  reason 
to  reach  truth.  It  thus  rendered  inevitable  a  change 
in  philosophic  thinking  from  halfness  towards  whole- 
ness, from  superficiality  towards  profundity,  which 
necessarily  affected  other  forms  of  thinking. 

III.  IIUME^S  AGNOSTICISM  IN  RELIGION 

Holding  the  views  which  have  been  indicated, 
Hume  must  have  been  a  singularly  inconsistent  think- 
er had  he  not  been  an  agnostic  in  religion.  In  that 
case  he  would  obviously  have  been  unfaithful  to  the 
spirit,  the  principles,  and  the  conclusions  of  his 
philosophy.  He  can  be  charged  with  no  such  incon- 
sistency. He  was  as  agnostic  in  religion  as  in  phi- 
losophy. He  has  sought  to  undermine  all  religious 
knowledge,  all  rational  faith.  Although  well  en- 
dowed with  natural  and  social  affections,  his  spiritual 
susceptibilities  were  not  strong,  and  hence  his  scepti- 

155 


AGNOSTICISM    OF  HTME  AND   KANT 

cal  reasonings  were  little  checked  or  disturbed  by  his 
feelings  even  in  the  religious  sphere.  His  intellect 
had  little  emotional  resistance  to  overcome  even  when 
treating  the  most  momentous  religious  questions  as 
freely  and  coolly  as  if  they  were  mere  metaphysical 
puzzles  without  any  practical  bearing  on  life  and  con- 
duct. It  was  thus  that  he  treated  them.  The  de- 
pendence of  religious  opinion  on  philosophical  spec- 
ulation has  never  been  more  obvious  than  in  Hume's 
case. 

While  Hume,  however,  may  be  fairly  described  as 
not  less  agnostic  in  theology  than  in  philosophy,  he 
ought  not  to  be  represented  as  more  so.  He  showed 
no  special  desire  to  throw  doubt  or  discredit  on  relig- 
ion. He  simply  dealt  with  it  on  the  same  principles, 
in  the  same  spirit,  and  after  the  same  manner  as  he 
dealt  with  physical  nature  and  the  human  mind  ;  that 
is  to  say,  he  was,  so  far  as  his  speculations  were  con- 
cerned, about  as  consistently  and  completely  agnostic 
as  an  agnostic  can  be  in  the  religious  as  in  other 
spheres.  I  repeat,  so  far  as  his  speculations  were 
concerned.  1  do  not  speak  of  his  personal  belief,  nor 
do  I  think  that  we  know  exactly  what  that  was  either 
in  philosophy  or  in  theology.  It  clearly  did  not  coin- 
cide in  either  with  his  s]>eculations.  He  saw  that  his 
principles  led  to  conclusions  which  left  no  room  for 
science  or  philosophy  and  could  not  be  consistently 
and  completely  accepted  without  arresting  all  thought 
and  action,  and  he  did  not  pretend  so  to  accept  them, 
although  he  professed  not  to  see  on  what  other  princi- 
ples he  could  proceed  or  what  other  conclusions  he 

156 


HUME  NOT  HOSTILE  TO  RELIGION 

could  deduce  from  them.     We  have  no  reason  to  sup- 
pose that  it  was  otherwise  as  regards  religion. 

There  are  no  traces  in  Hume's  writings,  or  in  his 
correspondence,  or  in  trustworthy  accounts  of  him,  of 
hostility  to  religion.  He  objected  to  being  called  a 
Deist,  and  manifestly  because  the  name  implied  an- 
tagonism to  Christianity.  lie  did  not  directly  as- 
sail Christianity.  His  reticence  in  regard  to  it 
Avas  in  striking  contrast  to  the  attitude  and  con- 
duct of  the  English  Deists  and  the  French  Encyclo- 
pedists. He  was  the  intimate  friend  of  some  of  the 
most  eminent  divines  of  Scotland  in. his  day, — able 
and  cultured  men,  but  certainly  not  sceptical  as  to  the 
truth  of  Christianity.  In  his  intercourse  with  them 
religious  subjects  were  avoided,  plainly  by  a  sort  of 
tacit  understanding  on  both  sides,  only  explicable,  I 
think,  by  their  recognition  of  the  difference  between 
"  Davie  "  Hume  the  natural  man  and  David  Hume 
the  celebrated  Academical  philosopher,  and  of  the  un- 
reasonableness of  expecting  that  the  latter,  whatever 
might  be  the  personal  faith  of  the  former,  would  dis- 
avow his  speculations  so  long  as  he  did  not  see  that 
they  had  been  refuted.  When  his  friend  Mr.  Boyle 
attributed  the  uncommon  grief  manifested  by  him  on 
the  death  of  his  mother  to  his  having  thrown  off  the 
principles  of  religion  and  so  deprived  himself  of  its 
consolations,  his  answer,  we  are  told,  was,  "  Though 
I  throw  out  my  speculations  to  entertain  the  learned 
and  metaphysical  world,  yet  in  other  things  I  do  not 
think  so  differently  from  the  rest  of  the  world  as  you 
imagine." 

157 


AGNOSTICISM    OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

Hume  did  not  profess  to  be  a  philosopher  except 
when  he  was  philosophising.  He  did  not  attempt  to 
conform  to  his  scepticism  when  he  wrote  on  political 
subjects,  or  composed  the  History  of  England,  or  en- 
joyed the  society  of  his  friends.  Why  should  he  be 
supposed  to  have  done  so  in  regard  to  religion  ?  Is 
it  because  he  has  occasionally  spoken  as  if  his  theories 
merely  undermined  religion  and  metaphysical  specu- 
lation, and  has  even  told  the  students  of  science  that 
theirs  is  the  only  kind  of  knowledge  worth  possess- 
ing? But  he  has  as  exjjlicitly  told  theologians  that 
faith  cannot  be  overthrown  by  reason  and  that  "  Di- 
vine Revelation  is  the  most  solid  of  foundations." 
Like  so  many  "  academical  philosophers  "  Hume  was 
quite  willing  to  compliment  science  and  reason  at  the 
expense  of  religion  and  faith,  or  religion  and  faith  at 
the  expense  of  science  and  reason,  although  aware,  or 
perhaps  rather  because  aware,  that  reason  and  faith, 
science  and  religion,  were  alike  uncertain,  if  his  scep- 
ticism were  true. 

If  his  scepticism  were  true;  he  was  not  unconscious 
of  the  if  there — not  unsceptical  of  his  own  scepticism. 
To  what  extent  he  was  so  we  shall  probably  never 
know.  It  was  not  his  business,  and  still  more  mani- 
festly not  his  interest,  to  enlighten  the  world  on  that 
point.  What  he  has  made  clear,  however,  is  that 
those  who  adopt  his  premisses  must  be  prepared  to 
adopt  his  conclusions,  and  even  must  in  the  main  ac- 
cept them  all,  seeing  that  those  which  bear  destruc- 
tively on  ordinary  knowledge  and  science  are  not  less 
legitimately  drawn  than  those  which  affect  religion. 

158 


HUME'S  AGNOSTICISM  IN  RELIGION 

Those  who  adopt  his  premisses  and  draw  only  con- 
chisions  unfavourable  to  religion  show  that  their  logic 
is  biassed  by  anti-religious  prejudices. 

In  theology  the  agnosticism  of  Hume  had  the  same 
characteristic  and  merit  as  in  philosophy,  and  the  re- 
sult was  the  same.  Here  too  it  was  thorough;  it 
went  to  the  foundations — passed  b}^  all  questions  of 
secondary  importance,  and  dealt  with  those  on  which 
the  entire  fate  of  religion  as  a  claimant  to  reason  de- 
pended. And  here  too  this  was,  on  the  whole,  a  de- 
cided service  to  religion,  the  deepest  truths  of  which 
are  only  to  be  conclusively  established  through  exclu- 
sion of  the  deepest  doubts.  The  decisive  and  ulti- 
mate victories  of  faith  must  be  those  gained  over 
unbelief  as  to  what  is  absolutely  fundamental  and  es- 
sential. Hume  helped  more  than  any  one  else  of  his 
time  to  do  away  with  halfness  and  superficiality  in 
theology  no  less  than  in  general  philosophy.  He  con- 
vinced thinkers  that  the  Deistic  assumption  of  the 
self-evident  certainty  of  so-called  natural  religion  was 
a  mere  assumption ;  that  natural  religion  was  no  more 
indubitable  than  revealed  religion;  that  both  those 
who  would  attack  and  those  who  would  defend  relig- 
ion must  go  deeper  down  than  they  had  been  doing. 
The  change  introduced  by  Hume  was  thus  a  very 
great  one.  It  was  the  agitation,  so  far  as  religion 
was  concerned,  not  merely  of  the  question.  What  in 
it  is  true?  but  also  of  the  question,  ^Miether  or  not 
there  is  any  truth  in  it  ? 

His  denial  of  the  ability  of  the  mind  to  rise  above 
sensible  experience,  and  his  views  of  substance,  cause, 

159 


AGNOSTICISM    OF  HUME  AND   KANT 

and  personality,  left  liini  no  principles  on  wliicli  lie 
could  justify  belief  in  the  Divine  existence.  And  he 
did  not  seek  to  justify  it.  On  the  contrary,  while  he 
did  not  openly  assail  it,  he,  in  his  character  of  philo- 
sophic sceptic,  endeavoured  to  show  that  what  had 
been  regarded  as  its  rational  bases  were  untrust- 
worthy. 

He  set  aside  as  not  deserving  of  discussion  the  opin- 
ion that  we  know  God  by  intuition.  Those  who  hold 
that  opinion  should  take  note  of  Hume's  estimate  of 
it,  instead  of  merely  attaching,  as  they  so  often  do,  an 
excessive  value  to  his  criticisms  of  the  theistic  proofs. 

The  a  priori  argument  he  rejected  without  any 
serious  consideration.  Whatever  had  an  appearance  of 
a  scholastic  origin  or  character  got  slight  justice  from 
him.  His  treatment  of  the  a  priori  proof  strikingly 
exemplifies  this.  Instead  of  being  studied  with  in- 
terest or  insight,  instead  of  being  examined  and 
judged  with  impartiality  and  care,  it  is  summarily 
condemned  on  the  assumption  that  every  matter  of 
fact  is  a  contingent  existence — a  mere  and  most 
doubtful  assumption  which  manifestly  begs  the  whole 
question  at  issue. 

The  reasoning  by  which  Hume  attempted  to  get  rid 
of  the  a  posteriori  proof  is  ingenious,  and  has  not  un- 
deservedly attracted  much  attention.  It  is  entirely 
founded,  however,  on  his  agnostic  view  of  causality, 
and  must  appear  inconclusive  to  those  who  do  not 
accept  that  view.  It  is  equally  in  his  peculiar  view 
of  causality  that  he  finds  the  principle  of  his  cele- 
brated argument  against  the  doctrine  of  a  future  dis- 

160 


NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  RELIGION 

tribiition  of  rewards  and  punishments.  The  argu- 
ments just  referred  to  I  do  not  require  either  to  ex- 
pound or  examine.  It  is  sufficient  for  my  purpose  to 
have  thus  referred  to  them.  It  will  not  be  questioned 
by  any  one  that,  if  they  be  valid,  belief  in  God  and  the 
immortality  of  the  soul  must  be  without  rational  war- 
rant, the  so-called  "  light  of  nature  "  an  illusion,  and 
all  so-called  natural  religion  merely  blind  instinct, 
inherited  prejudice,  caprice,  and  superstition. 

The  most  valuable  and  interesting,  perhaps,  of 
Hume's  writings  regarding  religion  is  his  Natural 
History  of  Religion.  This  treatise  had  the  great 
merit  of  initiating  that  historical  method  of  studying 
religion  which  has  been  found  so  fruitful.  In  it 
Hume  very  properly  distinguished  between  the  rea- 
sons and  the  causes  of  religion — i.e.,  between  the 
grounds  which  may  be  adduced  in  vindication  of  it 
and  the  motives  or  influences  which  may  have  actually 
evoked  it  and  made  it  what  it  is :  and  with  no  less  jus- 
tice showed  that  in  dealing  with  religion  simply  as  a 
historical  phenomenon  we  have  only  to  do  with  its 
causes,  not  with  its  reasons  as  such.  He  likewise 
quite  correctly  showed  that  its  causes  had  often  not 
been  reasons  but  imaginations,  feelings,  casual  occur- 
rences— illusions  produced  by  fears  and  desires,  ex- 
ternal causes  and  circumstances. 

But  when  he  endeavoured  to  produce  the  impres- 
sion that  the  reasons  of  religion  were  not  among  its 
causes,  or  even  that  reason  had  ever  been  entirely 
without  influence  in  the  formation  of  religion,  his 
scepticism  made  itself  manifest,  and  led  him  to  con- 

161 


AGNOSTICISM   OF  HUME  AKD   KANT 

travene  and  contradict  tlie  truth.  Tims  to  dissociate 
religion  from  reason  was  consistent  with  his  agnosti- 
cism, but  it  is  not  warranted  by  the  history  of  relig- 
ion when  studied  in  a  strictly  historical  manner.  The 
rational  apprehension  of  religious  truth  has  often 
been  far  from  the  strongest  factor  in  the  rise  and 
growth  of  religion,  but  it  has  always  been  a  factor. 
In  keeping  it  out  of  sight  Hume  ignored  what  alone 
explains  why  the  history  of  religion  has  been  the  pro- 
gressive movement  which  he  himself  represented  it 
to  be.  He  was  candid  enough  to  recognise  that  the 
history  of  religion  had,  on  the  whole,  from  beginning 
to  end,  steadily  advanced  towards  reasonableness, 
growingly  increased  in  consistency.  But  if  so,  must 
not  the  inspiration  and  power  of  reason  have  pervaded 
it  throughout  ?  Must  not  a  continuous  progress  tow- 
ards truth  be  one  essentially  true  ?  Must  not  the 
history  of  religion,  even  as  treated  by  Hume  and  by 
many  since  Hume,  as  well  as  by  students  of  every  kind 
who  have  shown  regard  for  its  facts,  be  allowed  to  be 
one  which  bears  testimony  not  for  but  against  agnos- 
ticism as  to  religion  ? 

Hume  dealt  with  revelation  agnostically  in  his  cel- 
ebrated Essay  on  Miracles.  He  assumed  revelation 
to  be  essentially  miraculous,  and  only  provable,  if 
provable  at  all,  by  miracles  of  an  external  character 
perceptible  by  the  senses.  Many  Christian  apologists 
of  the  present  day  would  decidedly  refuse  to  admit  the 
assumption,  or  to  accept  the  conceptions  of  revelation 
and  miracle  which  it  presupposes,  but  they  were  uni- 
versally received  by  the  contemporaries  of  Hume. 

162 


"ESSAY  ON  MIRACLES" 

Besides,  even  although  it  may  be  said  that  his  ideas 
of  revelation  and  miracle  belonged  to  an  age  which 
has  to  a  considerable  extent  vanished,  his  mode  of 
treating  them  must  be  allowed  to  have  been  none  the 
less  thoroughly  characteristic  of  his  agnosticism. 

He  did  not  question  the  conceivability  of  miracles ; 
he  thought  he  had  a  distinct  enough  notion  of  them  to 
define  them  as  "  violations  of  the  laws  of  nature  " — 
i.e.,  events  brought  about  not  by  natural  means  but 
by  an  agency  above,  beside,  or  opposed  to  nature.  He 
did  not  attempt  to  prove  the  impossibility  of  miracles ; 
he  recognised  that  that  could  only  be  done  by  disprov- 
ing the  existence  of  God  and  of  supernatural  beings. 
But  he  undertook  to  show  the  incredibility  of  miracles 
— their  unprovability  to  those  who  have  not  been  wit- 
nesses of  them.  Experience,  he  argued,  assures  us 
that  the  laws  of  nature  are  invariable,  while  human 
testimony  is  deceptive,  and  can  never  therefore  cer- 
tify a  deviation  from  these  laws  a  miracle.  Even  if 
witnesses  were  always  trustworthy,  and  if  there  were 
a  full  proof  from  testimony  in  favour  of  a  miracle, 
it  would  only  be  equal  to  the  full  proof  from  expe- 
rience which  is  against  it,  and  consequently  could  not 
entitle  us  to  prefer  belief  in  a  miracle  to  belief  in  the 
inviolable  uniformity  of  natural  law.  Hence  a  mir- 
acle, even  if  attested  by  testimony  in  the  highest  pos- 
sible degree,  can  never  be  rendered  credible  in  the 
lowest  degree,  but  in  reality  never  is  so  attested,  see- 
ing that  testimony  is  frequently  erroneous  and  men- 
dacious. 

Such  is  the  general  tenor  of  his  argument — one 
163 


AGNOSTICISM   OF  HUME  AND  KANT 

which  it  is  not  necessary  to  criticise  or  to  endeavour 
to  show  to  be  fallacious,  but  of  which  it  may  be  de- 
sirable to  indicate  how  agnostic  it  is. 

First,  then,  the  argument  while  denying  that  a 
miracle  can  ever  be  so  proved  as  to  be  credible  allows 
that  it  conceivably  might  be  fully  proved,  as  fully 
proved  as  a  law  of  nature.  It  is  only  because  testi- 
mony has  not  been  found  to  be  universally  true  that 
the  proof  in  favour  of  a  miracle  is  represented  as  nec- 
essarily weaker  than  the  proof  in  favour  of  a  law 
of  nature.  But  it  is  easily  supposable  that  human 
testimony  might  have  been  always  veracious  and  ac- 
curate. Suppose  it  to  have  been  so.  What  would 
then,  according  to  Hume's  own  account,  and  if  his  ar- 
gument be  valid,  be  the  state  of  a  human  intellect  in 
the  presence  of  testimony  in  favour  of  a  miracle  ? 
This :  there  Avould  be  a  full  proof  for  and  a  full  proof 
against  the  miracle — an  equal  proof  on  opposite  sides 
to  which  no  addition  could  be  made,  and  a  perfectly 
truthful  human  intellect  cognisant  of  both  but  utterly 
incapable  of  ever  coming  to  a  rational  decision  for  or 
against  either  the  miracle  or  the  related  law  of  nature. 
It  suits  admirably  an  agnostic  like  Hume  to  devise  an 
argument  which  thus  implies  that  the  human  mind, 
even  at  its  best  estate  and  in  the  most  favourable  cir- 
cumstances, must  be  of  a  whimsical  and  absurd  nat- 
ure ;  but  a  non-agnostic  can  hardly  fail  to  regard  such 
an  argument  as  in  the  highest  degree  suspicious  even 
prior  to  logical  scrutiny. 

Further,  were  the  argimient  in  question  valid,  a 
thing  might  be  true,  and  clearly  seen  to  be  true,  and 

164 


HIS    ARGUMENT   EXAMINED 

vet  evidence  of  its  truth  might  be  impossible  to  be 
given  to  those  who  were  not  eye-witnesses  of  it.  It  is 
an  argument  to  the  effect  that  even  if  a  miracle  oc- 
curred, its  having  occurred  could  not  be  made  known 
to  any  one  who  did  not  see  it  take  place.  Now,  that 
a  thing  may  be  true  while  one  has  not  sufficient  evi- 
dence of  its  truth,  is  an  obvious  and  incontestable 
proposition ;  but  that  a  thing  may  be  true  and  have 
been  observed,  and  yet  that  no  sufficient  evidence  can 
be  given  for  it  to  others  than  the  eye-witnesses,  is  an 
assertion  of  a  very  different  kind,  and  indeed  a  para- 
dox which  could  only  originate  in  an  agnostic  imag- 
ination, and  which  implies  that  there  is  an  impassable 
gulf  between  man's  mind  and  a  certain  class  of  real 
or  at  least  conceivable  facts. 

Still  further,  if  the  principle  of  Hume's  argument 
be  valid  it  should  prove  more  than  he  inferred  from 
it ;  it  should  prove  that  even  the  eye-witness  of  a  mir- 
acle could  not  have  sufficient  evidence  of  its  existence 
to  make  belief  of  it  rational.  The  ground  on  which 
Hume  rejects  the  evidence  of  testimony  when  ad- 
duced in  support  of  a  miracle  is  simply  that  testimony 
does  not  invariably  correspond  to  the  truth  of  facts, 
while  the  laws  of  nature  are,  it  is  alleged,  invariable. 
But  the  testimony  of  sense  itself  is  not  always  accord- 
ant with  the  truth  of  facts.  We  see  wrongly  accord- 
ing to  the  laws  of  vision  as  well  as  correctly.  The 
senses  deceive  us,  and  there  is  no  miracle  involved  in 
their  deceiving  us.  Hence  on  Hume's  principles 
even  the  senses  can  in  no  circumstances  afford  a  suf- 
ficient proof  of  the  occurrence  of  a  miracle.     His  ar- 

165 


AGNOSTICISM    OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

gument  not  only  places  an  impassable  barrier  between 
the  truth  and  those  who  have  heard  it  re^wrted  by 
others,  but  raises  an  insurmountable  barrier  between 
a  man's  own  mind  and  what  may  happen  before  his 
eyes. 

Finally,  Hume  directly  sought  by  his  argument 
concerning  miracles  to  justify  scepticism  as  to  revela- 
tion, and  so  regarded  the  argument  was  not  less  rele- 
vant than  ingenious.  If  valid  at  all,  what  it  proves 
can  be  no  less  than  that  God  could  not  make  known 
His  character  or  will  to  mankind  otherwise  than 
through  the  laws  of  nature ;  that  even  if  He  wished  to 
put  Himself  in  direct  and  sj^ecial  communication 
with  His  creatures  He  could  by  no  means  carry  His 
desire  into  effect.  That  is  a  thoroughly  agnostic  con- 
ception, and  yet  how  much  gnosticism  there  is  in  thus 
attempting  to  limit  the  power  of  omnipotence. 

The  speculative  attitude  of  Hume  towards  religion 
has  been  thus  described  by  himself  when  concluding 
his  Treatise  on  its  Natural  History.  "  The  whole 
is  a  riddle,  an  enigma,  an  inexplicable  mystery. 
Doubt,  uncertainty,  suspense  of  judgment,  appear  the 
only  result  of  our  most  accurate  scrutiny  concerning 
this  subject.  But  such  is  the  frailty  of  human  reason, 
and  such  the  irresistible  contagion  of  opinion,  that 
even  this  deliberate  doubt  could  scarcely  be  upheld, 
did  we  not  enlarge  our  view,  and,  opposing  one  species 
of  superstition  to  another,  set  them  a  quarrelling; 
while  we  ourselves,  during  their  fury  and  contention, 
happily  make  our  escape  into  the  calm,  though  ob- 
scure, regions  of  philosophy."     Such  by  his  own  con- 

166 


ISSUE   OF  HUME'S   PHILOSOPHY 

fession  was  the  final  issue  of  a  thorough  and  com- 
plete scepticism.  But  what  a  dismal,  dreadful  issue ! 
For  the  vast  majority  of  mankind,  who  certainly  can- 
not escape  into  the  regions  of  philosophy,  no  hope,  no 
refuge,  only  the  doom  of  living  and  dying  in  the  dark- 
ness of  delusion.  For  the  few  who,  like  Hume  him- 
self, can  escape  into  them,  no  prospect  beyond  that  of 
finding  them  as  empty,  as  unreal,  as  unsatisfying  as 
he  has  repeatedly  and  pathetically  confessed  them  to 
be,  and  as  obscure,  as  enigmatic,  as  uncertain  as  the 
region  out  of  which  they  had  fled. 

It  must  now,  I  think,  be  apparent  that  those  who 
have  seen  no  scepticism  in  the  speculations  of  Hume 
have  not  examined  them  very  closely,  and  that  any 
characterisation  of  Hume  as  a  philosopher  which  ig- 
nores the  agnostic  in  him  is  quite  like  an  estimate  of 
the  play  of  Hamlet  which  leaves  Hamlet  out  of  ac- 
count. All  else  in  the  mind  and  activity  of  Hume 
can  no  more  make  up  Hume  if  his  agnosticism  be  ex- 
cluded than  the  other  characters  of  the  drama  can 
make  up  Hamlet  if  the  Prince  of  Denmark  be  omit- 
ted. It  is  an  injustice  to  Hume  himself  not  to  place 
his  agnosticism  in  a  clear  light,  for  it  is  above  all  that 
which  gave  him,  and  still  gives  him,  his  eminent  place 
and  immense  significance  in  the  history  of  philoso- 
phy. It  was  what  opened  the  eyes  of  Reid  and  of  his 
followers  to  the  necessity  of  seeking  anew  for  the 
foundations  of  knowledge  and  belief.  It  was  what 
roused  Kant,  as  he  himself  avowed,  out  of  his  "  dog- 
matic slumber,"  and  compelled  him  to  undertake 
those  labours  in  which  all  subsequent  German  philos- 

167 


AGNOSTICISM    OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

ophy  may  be  held  to  have  originated.  It  was  what 
directly  and  immediately  evoked  the  latest  great  stage 
or  phase  of  philosophy,  the  one  which  influences  so 
powerfully  all  contemporary  thought  and  life.  The 
scepticism  of  Hume  deservedly  made  its  author's 
name  immortal  and  his  influence  enormous.  It  had 
all  the  comprehensiveness  and  thoroughness  appro- 
priate to  a  radical  scepticism,  while  easily  intelligible 
and  free  from  all  scholastic  formalism,  technicali- 
ties, and  pedantry.  It  was  singularly  bold  and  un- 
sparing, and  yet  skilfully  conciliatory.  It  presented 
the  most  subtle  thoughts  in  an  attractive  form.  And, 
further,  it  was  a  really  logical  deduction  from  long 
dominant  and  widely  accepted  philosophical  princi- 
ples. As  the  means  of  bringing  to  light  the  erroneous- 
ness  of  those  principles  it  was  a  needed,  a  reasonable, 
and  even  a  providential  thing.  The  justification 
of  it  has  been  ample,  being  whatever  is  true  and 
good  in  the  intellectual  and  spiritual  development  to 
which  it  has  given  rise. 

IV.   KANt's  answer  to   HUME 

The  theories  of  Hume  could  not  fail  to  be  jierceived 
to  have  an  immense  significance  for  philosophy  and 
theology,  for  science,  religion,  and  morality.  They 
brought  fully  to  light  the  scepticism  latent  in  the  em- 
piricism derived  from  Bacon,  Gassendi,  and  Ilobbes, 
and  at  the  same  time  made  manifest  that  the  dogmatic 
rationalism  which  had  appeared  as  Cartesianism, 
Spinosism,  and  Wolfianism  could  supply  no  rational 

168 


KANT'S  ANSWER  TO   HUME 

answer  to  it.  In  a  word,  they  plainly  showed  the 
necessity  for  a  thorough  revision  not  only  of  British 
but  of  European  speculative  thought.  They  required 
a  refutation  of  such  a  kind  as  could  only  be  obtained 
through  a  reinvestigation  of  the  entire  problem  of 
knowledge. 

Thomas  Reid  and  Immanuel  Kant  clearly  recog- 
nised the  necessity  and  sought  to  meet  it.  Their  an- 
swers to  Hume  were  to  a  considerable  extent  identical 
or  accordant,  and  to  that  extent  they  were  substantial- 
ly satisfactory.  Kant's  answer  was  reached  through  a 
process  of  investigation  much  more  profound  and 
systematic  than  Reid's,  but  one  which  often  led  him 
to  false  conclusions,  and,  indeed,  issued  at  many 
points  in  a  scepticism  as  radical  as  Hume's  own. 
Like  Reid,  he  conclusively  showed  that  knowledge 
could  not  be  reduced  to  sensations,  and  that  intelli- 
gence implied  in  all  its  operations  necessary  condi- 
tions  as  well  as  contingent  impressiQus,  and  so  far  he 
substantially  disposed  of  the  scepticism  of  Hume  by 
proving  its  dependence  on  an  inadequate  and  erro- 
neous psychology.  But  when  he  proceeded  to  argue 
that  the  constitutive  principles  involved  in  knowledge 
have  to  do  only  with  phenomena  or  states  of  conscious 
experience,  but  are  wholly  incapable  of  placing  us 
face  to  face  with  things ;  that  they  have  a  merely  sub- 
jective and  relative  value,  but  give  us  no  information 
as  to  external  reality ;  that  while  useful  in  co-ordinat- 
ing and  unifying  our  perceptions  they  in  no  degree 
justify  our  affirming  that  there  is  anything  corre- 
sponding to  these  perceptions, — then  he  virtually  un- 

169 


AGNOSTICISM    OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

did  his  own  work,  and  became  not  the  conqueror  but 
the  lineal  successor  of  Hume.  Reid  was  too  single 
and  simple  minded  thus  "  both  to  run  with  the  hare 
and  hunt  with  the  hounds."  Hence  his  work  as  a 
philosopher,  although  far  inferior  to  Kant's  in  most 
respects,  was  greatly  superior  to  it  in  consistency.  It 
was  wholly  anti^agnostic.  With  it,  therefore,  we 
need  not  here  further  concern  ourselves.  With 
Kant's,  however,  we  have  still  to  do,  although  only  in 
so  far  as  it  is  agnostic. 

The  limits  within  which  a  sketch  like  the  present 
must  be  confined  forbid  my  attempting  either  to  de- 
scribe or  refute  at  length  the  agnosticism  of  Kant.  I 
must,  in  fact,  restrict  myself  to  indicating  the  respects 
in  which  I  dissent  from  what  is  peculiar  to  it 
and  essential  in  it.  All  that  is  so  is  contained  in  one 
work,  The  Critique  of  Pure  Reason;  and,  indeed,  is 
just  what  is  distinctive  of  the  three  theories  expound- 
ed in  that  work  and  derived  by  Kant  from  his  exam- 
ination of  the  three  faculties  which  in  his  view  have  to 
do  with  knowledge,  namely,  sense,  understanding, 
and  reason.  All  else  in  the  Criticism  is  merely  scaf- 
folding, not  building. 

Hume  had  explained  away  everything  like  neces- 
sary connection  in  thought.  He  had  dissolved,  by 
analysis,  all  apparent  knowledge  into  unintelligibil- 
ity.  He  had  got  rid  of  all  synthetic  judgments. 
That  being  the  general  result  of  his  scepticism,  the 
general  problem  with  which  Kant  had  to  grapple  was 
to  show  that  there  were  necessary  synthetic  judg- 
ments so  rooted  in  the  very  constitution  of  intelli- 

170 


TEANSCENDENTAL  ESTHETIC 

gence  that  they  could  not  be  rationally  destroyed  by 
any  analysis.  To  solve  it  he  raised  three  questions: 
Are  synthetic  a  priori  judgments  possible  in  mathe- 
matics ?  Are  such  judgments  possible  in  physics  ? 
And,  are  they  possible  in  metaphysics?  The  first 
question  he  answered  affirmatively  in  his  critical  the- 
ory of  cognition  through  sense  (his  transcendental 
(esthetic)  ;  the  second  also  affirmatively  in  his  critical 
theory  of  cognition  through  understanding  {tran- 
scendental analytic)  ;  and  the  third  negatively  by  his 
critical  theory  as  to  cognition  through  reason  {tran- 
scendental dialectic) . 

§  I.    Tkanscendental    Esthetic 

•  The  general  scope  of  Kant's  investigation  into  the 
capacity  through  which  objects  are  given  and  percep- 
tions furnished  to  us  may  be  thus  stated.  The  effect 
of  an  object  upon  the  senses  is  a  sensation.  The  sort 
of  perception  which  relates  to  an  object  by  means  of 
sensation  is  an  empirical  intuition ;  and  the  undeter- 
mined object  is  a  phenomenon.  That  in  the  phenom- 
enon which  corresponds  to  the  sensation  is  (in  Kan- 
tian phraseology)  its  matter,  and  that  which  causes  it 
to  be  arranged  under  certain  relations  its  form.  The 
matter  comes  from  without,  the  form  must  lie  within 
to  receive  it.  The  form  regarded  wholly  apart  from 
the  matter  is  said  to  be  pure ;  the  pure  form  of  sense 
to  be  pure  intuition.  It  is  with  the  pure  forms  of  sense 
or  pure  intuitions  that  Transcendental  ^Esthetic  has 
to  do ;  and  to  accomplish  its  work  it  first  isolates  the 

171 


AGNOSTICISM   OF    HUME   AND   KANT 

sensuous  faculty  from  all  other  faculties  of  mind,  and 
then  takes  away  from  intuition  all  that  is  given 
through  sensuous  impression,  so  that  nothing  may  re- 
main but  pure  intuition.  The  result,  according  to 
Kant,  is  the  discovery  that  there  are  two,  and  only 
two,  pure  forms  of  sensuous  knowing,  viz.,  space  and 
time — space  the  form  of  external  sense,  and  time  the 
form  of  internal,  and,  mediately,  of  external  sense. 

Was  Kant  entitled  to  affirm  these  positions  ?  Not, 
it  seems  to  me,  at  the  outset  of  his  critical  inquiry ; 
not  until  he  had  settled  a  number  of  questions  which 
he  never  even  distinctly  raised. 

He  assumed,  for  example,  that  the  sensuous  fac- 
ulty can  be  isolated  from  our  other  faculties  of  cog- 
nition. What,  then,  does  the  assumption  amount  to  ? 
Virtually  to  assuming  the  falsity  of  two  doctrines  well 
entitled  to  a  careful  discussion — the  doctrine  that  sen- 
sation is  the  root  of  all  thought,  and  also  the  doctrine 
that  thought  in  its  essentials,  the  reason  in  its  generic 
integrity,  is  the  condition  of  sensation.  If  all  thought 
be,  as  experientialists  hold,  involved  in  and  evolved 
out  of  sense,  the  separation  of  the  sensuous  faculty 
from  other  faculties  is  impossible,  as  the  other  facul- 
ties are  developments  or  transformations  of  sense. 
The  fact  that  Kant  did  not  adopt  the  doctrine,  but, 
on  the  contrary,  aimed  at  definitely  refuting  it 
and  thoroughly  discrediting  the  sceptical  conclusions 
which  had  been  deduced  from  it,  only  made  it  so  much 
the  more  necessary  for  him  not  to  assume  to  be  done 
what,  according  to  the  doctrine  in  question,  could  not 
possibly  be  done.     And  the  necessity  was  yet  further 

172 


THEOKIES   OF   FOKM  AND   MATTER 

increased  by  the  fact  that  most  even  of  those  who  re- 
ject the  empiricist  theory  of  knowledge  will  so  far 
agree  with  those  who  maintain  it  as  to  deny  that  sense 
can  be  separated  from  what  else  is  in  cognition  in  the 
way  Kant  suj^poses.  The  assumption  that  sensuous 
cognition  is  the  result  of  an  impression  and  a  form — 
sight,  for  instance,  of  an  impression  produced  by  light 
without  and  received  into  the  form  of  space  within — 
is  happily  not  the  only  alternative  supposition  to  the 
view  which  would  make  sensuous  cognition  the  result 
merely  of  the  external  impression. 

Further,  Kant  began  his  investigation  by  dividing 
sensuous  cognition  into  matter  and  form,  on  the  as- 
sumption that  the  former  comes  from  without  and  the 
latter  from  within.  But  was  not  starting  thus,  if  not 
begging  the  question  in  dispute,  at  least  unduly  fa- 
vouring a  particular  answer  ?  Was  it  fair  even  to 
suggest  at  the  outset  that  the  form  is  in  any  respect 
more  subjective  than  the  matter  ?  Prima  facie  it 
seems  just  as  probable  that  the  form  is  without  and 
the  matter  within,  or  that  both  form  and  matter  are 
without  or  both  within,  as  that  the  matter  is  without 
and  the  form  within.  Until  proof  is  produced  that 
space  and  time  are  within  the  mind  or  subjective, 
every  mode  of  expression  which  implies  that  they  are 
so  may  well  be  deemed  objectionable. 

Kant's  account  of  the  matter  and  the  forms  of  sen- 
suous cognition,  it  may  be  added,  implies  that  the  lat- 
ter are  so  separate  from  and  independent  of  the  former 
as  to  be  given  in  the  mind  previous  to  all  experience 
and  to  exist  in  it  as  pure  intuitions.     That  view,  how- 

173 


AGNOSTICISM    OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

ever,  does  not  seem  to  be  confirmed  hj  the  observation 
or  analysis  of  the  processes  of  sensuous  consciousness. 
We  cannot  apprehend  space  before  or  apart  from 
experience.  Any  apprehension  of  space  is  already 
experience.  We  apprehend  bodies  as  spatial,  as  ex- 
ternal and  extended,  but  have  not  the  slightest  con- 
sciousness of  being  in  possession  of  an  intuition  of 
space  which  we  superimpose  on  bodies  and  thereby 
attain  to  a  knowledge  of  them.  The  so-called  form 
and  the  so-called  matter  of  sense-experience  condition 
each  the  other,  are  inseparable,  and  are  not  related  to 
each  other  as  a  subjective  to  an  objective  constituent. 
No  sufficient  reason  has  been  shown  for  conceiving  of 
space  as  given  in  the  mind  before  all  actual  percep- 
tions, or  for  representing  its  a  priori  character,  as- 
suming it  to  be  of  such  a  character,  as  dependent  on 
its  being  merely  subjective,  simply  a  mental  form.  It 
would  seem  to  be  capable  of  being  described  with  pro- 
priety as  a  form  only  in  the  sense  that  external  ob- 
jects must  be  apprehended  and  thought  of  as  in  it,  and 
it  only  as  capable  of  containing  such  objects  and  ren- 
dering possible  their  groupings  and  motions. 

Kant's  exposition  of  space  was  a  remarkable  and 
important  piece  of  work.  It  opposed  to  exj^eriential- 
ist  accounts  of  the  cognition  of  space  a  nativistic 
theory  of  a  bold  and  ingenious  character,  containing  a 
large  amount  of  important  truth,  and  presented  with 
so  much  skill  as  to  make  an  epoch  in  the  history  of 
the  doctrine  of  external  perception.  For  a  length- 
ened period  it  was  very  generally  regarded  as  having 
definitively  shown  the  futility  of  attempting  to  trace 

174 


KANT'S   PECULIAR  INFERENCES 

the  principles  of  mathematics  to  roots  latent  in  exi^e- 
rience.  There  is  less  confidence  felt  in  it  now  among 
competently  informed  students  of  psychology.  The 
problem  is  still  under  discussion,  and  expert  opinion 
is  as  much  divided  regarding  the  solution  of  it  as  it 
ever  was.  Nevertheless  the  study  of  the  subject  to 
which  it  relates  has  certainly  been  in  various  respects 
much  advanced  since  Kant  wrote,  and  largely  so  be- 
cause of  the  impulse  which  Kant  gave.  His  views  as 
to  space  and  sense-perception  no  longer  satisfy,  but 
that  is  owing,  perhaps,  almost  as  much  to  their  sug- 
gestions having  been  followed  up  as  to  their  defects 
having  been  detected. 

Kant  has  quite  conclusively  shown  that  the  cogni- 
tion of  space  is  not  a  general  notion,  not  a  concept 
derived  by  abstraction  and  generalisation  from  a  mul- 
titude of  particulars.  But  he  was  hasty  in  inferring 
that  because  not  a  general  notion  it  must  be  a  pure 
intuition.  A  cognition  may  be  neither  a  general  no- 
tion nor  a  pure  intuition.  It  may  be  also  either  a 
particular  notion  or  an  impure  intuition.  And,  in 
fact,  so  far  as  space  is  apprehended  through  sense — 
and  it  is  largely  so  apprehended  through  muscular 
mobility,  touch,  and  vision — it  is  not  apprehended  by 
pure  intuition.  Berkeley  and  Hume,  by  showing 
that  we  cannot  even  imagine  space  apart  from  colour 
and  figure,  had  refuted  by  anticipation  Kant's  view 
of  the  apprehension  of  pure  space  through  sense-per- 
ception. And,  it  may  be  added,  consciousness  clearly 
testifies  that  in  the  most  abstract,  supersensuous, 
purely  rational  thought,  space  can  only  be  cognised 

175 


AGNOSTICISM   OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

by  us  as  that  in  which  bodies  may  be  contained,  in 
which  lines,  circles,  planes,  cubes,  &c.,  may  be  drawn 
or  conceived  to  be  drawn,  and  in  which  motions  may 
take  place  or  be  imagined  to  take  place. 

As  to  the  nature  of  space  Kant  draws  from  his  in- 
vestigations two  distinctive  and  very  peculiar  infer- 
ences, both  of  which  seem  to  me  unwarranted. 

The  first  is  that  space  represents  no  thing-in-itself 
or  attribute  of  a  tliing-in-itself.  Now  that  inference 
was  manifestly  premature  unless  he  himself  knew 
what  a  thing-in-itself  was,  and  until  he  had  also  in- 
formed his  readers  what  it  was.  Yet  he  affirms  and 
insists  on  the  truth  of  the  inference  without  giving 
any  information  as  to  the  thing-in-itself.  This  is  so 
illogical  a  procedure  that  one  naturally  seeks  for  an 
explanation  of  it ;  and  that  is  not  difiicult  to  find.  It 
is  just  that  Kant  started  on  his  critical  investigation 
with  a  bias  in  favour  of  a  particular  conclusion  and 
worked  steadily  under  its  influence  to  the  close  of  the 
investigation.  What  was  that  particular  conclusion  ? 
This — that  we  neither  know  nor  can  know  anything 
whatever  about  the  thing-in-itself.  Now,  that  such 
was  Kant's  belief  was  certainly  a  sufficient  reason  for 
his  not  explaining  to  us  what  a  thing-in-itself  is.  It 
is  rather  strange,  however,  that  he  should  not  have 
seen  that  it  was  an  equally  sufficient  reason  for  his 
not  volunteering  to  tell  us  that  space,  or  anything  else, 
is  not  a  thing-in-itself.  Where  knowledge  ceases  the 
right  to  deny  ceases  as  well  as  the  right  to  affirm.  If 
we  know  and  can  know  nothing  about  things-in-them- 
selves,  we  cannot  possibly  be  entitled  to  say  either 

176 


OBJECTIONS   TO   KANT'S  VIEW 

what  belongs  to  them  or  what  does  not  belong  to  them. 
If  we  know  nothing  about  them,  then,  for  anything 
we  know  space  may  belong  to  them,  or  may  be  one  of 
them,  if  there  be  more  than  one  of  them.  Further, 
the  cause  of  our  inability  to  know  anything  about 
tliem,  and  of  our  consequent  inability  to  affirm  or  deny 
anything  about  them,  is  a  most  obvious  one.  It  is 
that  the  very  conception  of  the  Kantian  "  Ding  an 
sich "  is,  as  has  been  said,  "  ein  Unding."  It  is 
a  pseudo-conception,  an  inconceivable  conception, 
which  owes  its  existence  wholly  to  unreason.  It  has 
been  a  most  disastrous  conception,  the  seed  of  a  vast 
growth  of  nonsense  which  has  pretended  to  be  knowl- 
edge or  science  or  philosophy  of  the  unknowable. 
One  is  sorry  to  have  to  say  it,  but  Kant  may  be  re- 
garded as  the  father  of  all  those  who  during  the  last 
hundred  years  have  vainly  laboured  to  acquire  and 
communicate  knowledge  of  the  unknowable. 

The  second  of  Kant's  inferences  as  to  the  nature  of 
space  is  that  it  is  only  a  subjective  condition  of  sense. 
I  admit  none  of  the  premisses  from  which  the  infer- 
ence is  drawn,  and  reject  the  inference  itself.  If 
space  be  not  known  by  us  as  objective  and  external, 
nothing  is  so  known  by  us,  and  we  can  have  no  intel- 
ligible and  consistent  conception  of  objectivity  or  ex- 
ternality. The  mind  has  no  consciousness  of  space 
as  subjective.  It  knows  it  only  as  independent  of  it- 
self, as  out  of  itself,  as  what  it  and  what  the  objects  it 
knows  are  in.  It  knows  it  not  as  what  is  given  by  the 
mind,  but  as  what  is  given  to  the  mind  and  appre- 
hended as  an  external  quality.      And  we   have  no 

177 


AGNOSTICISM   OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

right  to  assume  that  it  is  not  what  it  is  apprehended 
as  being.     The  testimony  of  consciousness  must  1x3 
accepted  as  true  until   proved  to  be  illusory.     Of 
proof  that  it  is  illusory  none  has  been  produced.     For 
setting  it  aside  no  weightier  reason  has  been  assigned 
than  the  mere  conjecture,  the  alleged  possibility,  that 
the  perceptive  faculty  might  have  been  so  constituted 
that  space  and  its  relations  would  not  have  been  valid 
to  it.     The  conjecture  has  not  been  shown  to  be  even 
intelligible,  nor  the  alleged  possibility  to  be,  properly 
speaking,  conceivable.     The  existence  of  intelligences 
incapable  through  their  limitations  of  man's  knowl- 
edge of  space  can  prove  nothing  against  the  validity 
of  his  knowledge  of  it.     Ignorance  is  no  contradiction 
of  knowledge.     If,  as  some  Jewish  philosophers  have 
maintained,  God  is  not  in  space  but  space  in  God, — 
space  not  the  place  of  God,  but  God  the  place  of  space, 
— or,  if  He  in  any  other  imaginable  or  even  unimag- 
inable way  transcend  space,  it  cannot  be  therefrom 
rationally  inferred  that  man's  geometry  must  be  false 
in  God's  sight.     Omniscience  cannot  regard  any  sci- 
ence as  nescience,  and  still  less  any  truth  as  an  error. 
That  the  cognition  of  space  is  so  far  dependent  on  the 
constitution  of  the  perceptive  faculty  may  be  admit- 
ted without  any  concession  to  the  fiction  of  the  sub- 
jectivity of  space  or  of  the  possible  or  partial  non- 
validity  of  necessary  truth.     An  intellect  for  which 
the  relations  of  space  were  not  valid  would  be  an  in- 
tellect of  such  a  kind  that  although  its  existence  may 
be   verbally   affirmed    it    cannot    be   truly,    i.e.,    ra- 
tionally, thought. 

178 


KANT^S  THEORY  EXAMINED 

To  such  objections  as  the  foregoing  Kant  and  his 
disciples  can  only  reply  that  they  do  not  deny  space 
to  be  perceived  by  lis  as  objective  and  real,  and  neces- 
sarily so  perceived ;  that,  on  the  contrary,  they  affirm 
it  to  be  empirically  real  in  the  sense  that  it  is  objec- 
tively valid  for  us,  inasmuch  as  necessarily  seeming  to 
contain  all  that  can  externally  appear  to  us,  and  that 
by  maintaining  its  transcendental  ideality,  as  not  be- 
ing or  belonging  to  any  "  thing-in-itself,"  they  justify 
the  common  consciousness  in  believing  in  its  empiri- 
cal reality,  which  is  all  that  is  needed  to  repel  scepti- 
cism. But  to  such  a  defence  as  that  the  obvious  an- 
swer is  that  what  they  are  charged  with  is  precisely 
what  they  admit — namely,  maintaining  that  space  is 
real  and  objective  in  the  sense  of  necessarily  seeming 
so,  and  maintaining  at  the  same  time  that  it  merely 
seems  to  be  so,  while  actually  ideal  and  subjective; 
and  that  to  do  so  is  not  to  attempt  to  repel  scepticism 
but  to  vindicate  it,  and  is,  in  fact,  virtually  to  repre- 
sent the  human  intellect  as  self -contradictory  and  un- 
trustworthy. Consistently  to  hold  both  the  empirical 
reality  and  the  transcendental  ideality  of  space  is  im- 
ix)ssible.  ]!^othing  can  be  objectively  valid  for  us 
which  can  be  proved  by  us  to  be  only  subjectively  ex- 
istent. It  may  be  added  that  if  space  be  merely  sub- 
jective the  things  perceived  in  space  must  be  merely 
subjective  also,  and  the  most  rational  view  of  the  uni- 
verse will  be  that  it  lies,  as  Schopenhauer  maintained, 
within  the  brain,  or  that  it  is,  with  all  individual 
brains  included,  one  vast  illusory  concept. 

Kant's  doctrine  of  time  closely  corresponds  to  his 
179 


AGNOSTICISM   OF  HUME  AND   KANT 

doctrine  of  space,  and  has  the  same  defects,  so  that  it 
may  be  left  both  unexplained  and  uncriticised.  It  is 
even  less  satisfactory,  however,  than  his  doctrine  of 
space,  inasmuch  as  it  takes  no  notice  of  the  differences 
between  the  cognition  of  time  and  that  of  space — dif- 
ferences so  radical  as  to  make  it  doubtful  whether 
time  ought  not  in  consistency  to  have  been  ranked  by 
Kant,  as  M.  Pillon  and  other  Neo-criticists  hold, 
rather  among  the  categories  of  the  understanding  than 
among  the  forms  of  sense. 

The  latter  portion  of  the  Transcendental  Esthetic 
consists  of  remarks  meant  to  illustrate  and  enforce 
those  two  positions :  1st,  Space  and  time  are  condi- 
tions only  of  phenomena  J  and  2nd,  They  are  the  nec- 
essary conditions  of  phenomena.  They  are  the  most 
distinctive  positions  in  Kant's  theory  of  sensuous 
knowledge,  the  theory  on  which  his  whole  philosophy 
is  based.  Whoever  denies  either  position  must  be 
ranked  among  his  opponents,  however  highly  he  may 
admire  his  philosophical  genius  and  in  whatever  other 
respects  he  may  acknowledge  his  services. 

Kant  considers  that  the  first  of  these  positions  de- 
livers philosophy  from  great  difficulties.  To  regard 
time  and  space  as  conditions  only  of  phenomena  dis- 
poses, he  thinks,  of  all  the  metaphysical  perplexities 
connected  with  them.  These  perplexities  arise,  in 
his  opinion,  simply  from  our  forgetting  that  time 
and  space  are  only  valid  within  the  sphere  of  phenom- 
ena, and  cannot  be  legitimately  made  use  of  beyond 
it.  To  recognise  that  time  and  space  are  not  real  ex- 
istences, but  only  conditions  of  geiisuous  knowing,  is 

180 


KANT'S   SOLUTION   CONSIDERED 

sufficient,  according  to  him,  to  free  us  at  once  from 
the  otherwise  insuperable  difficulty  of  what  he  regards 
as  the  manifest  absurdity  of  three  infinites — space, 
time,  and  God.  Other  deliverance,  he  holds,  there  is 
none.  Such  is  the  problem  which  Kant  raises,  and 
such  the  solution  which  he  gives  to  it. 

Now  ought  he  to  have  presented  the  problem  in 
that  form  ?  Surely  not.  He  required  not  merely  to 
assume  but  to  show  that  it  was  a  real  or  rational  prob- 
lem. Belief  in  more  infinites  than  one  may  be  ab- 
surd, but  it  is  plainly  not  self-evidently  absurd.  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  an  indubitable  fact  that  the  human 
mind  cannot  but  think  of  space  as  unbounded  and  of 
time  as  without  beginning  or  end.  That  being  the 
case,  what  is  manifestly  irrational  is  to  regard  them, 
prior  to  proof,  as  inconsistent  with  each  other,  or  in- 
consistent with  the  existence  of  an  Infinite  Creative 
Intelligence.  Kant  gave  no  proof;  nor  has  any  one 
else. 

Grant,  however,  the  rationality  of  his  problem,  the 
reality  of  his  so-called  "  insuperable  difficulty,"  and 
consider  only  his  proffered  solution.  Is  it  not  a  mere 
evasion  ?  The  absurdity,  if  there  be  any,  which  is 
alleged  to  constitute  the  difficulty,  lies  in  our  think- 
ing, and  in  our  being  so  constituted  as  to  be  unable 
not  to  think,  two  or  more  infinites.  From  that  ab- 
surdity, however,  if  it  be  an  absurdity,  we  can  only 
be  freed  by  being  freed  from  the  necessity  of  thinking 
those  infinites.  To  make  out  the  objective  unreality 
of  the  infinites  in  themselves  does  not  remove,  does  not 
diminish,  the  subjective  self-contradiction  involved 

181 


AGNOSTICISM    OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

in  the  thinking  of  them ;  naj,  it  increases  it,  inasmuch 
as  it  removes  the  only  ground  on  which  we  can  hojxi 
to  explain  what  difficulty  there  may  be  in  conjointly 
thinking  them — namely,  that  they  are  mysterious  be- 
cause real  and  infinite.  If  not  real  and  infinite,  if 
simply  in  us,  why  should  they  present  in  appearance 
and  in  thought  such  a  perplexity  ?  Kant's  famed 
"  solution  "  is  quite  illusory. 

His  second  position — namely,  that  space  and  time 
are  the  necessary  conditions  of  phenomena — wards 
off,  he  thinks,  the  scepticism  which  had  been  based  on 
the  theory  that  all  knowledge  comes  from  experience, 
and  establishes  the  possibility  and  validity  of  mathe- 
matics. And  it  might  have  done  so  had  it  not  been 
bound  and  chained  to  the  position  already  considered 
— the  dogma  that  they  are  conditions  only  of  phenom- 
ena and  necessary  only  so  far  as  our  thinking  is  con- 
cerned. Conditions  necessary  only  for  us  are  not 
truly  necessary.  The  notion  of  a  necessity  which 
does  not  transcend  what  is  contingent  and  particular 
is  essentially  self-contradictory — the  notion  of  a  ne- 
cessity which  is  not  strictly  and  universally  neces- 
sary. Scepticism  does  not  deny  that  space  and  time 
are  apprehended  as  necessary  conditions  of  phenom- 
ena. Even  the  scepticism  based  on  the  theory  that 
all  knowledge  comes  from  experience  does  not  deny 
that ;  it  merely  resolves  the  apprehension  into  an  illu- 
sion by  the  way  in  which  it  explains  its  relation  to  ex- 
perience. Hume  did  not  deny  that  time  and  space 
appear  to  human  thought  as  necessary,  but,  in  con- 
sistency with  his  general  theory  of  knowledge,  he  re- 

182 


KANT'S  SOLUTION   ILLUSORY 

fused  to  recognise  that  their  necessity  could  be  more 
than  an  appearance  evoked  out  of  sensations  and  their 
derivatives.  Kant  shows  that  the  apprehension  of 
time  and  space  as  necessary  is  not  derivable  from  ex- 
perience but  presupposed  by  it,  and  yet  argues  that  it 
is  only  in  appearance  objectively,  and  in  reality  mere- 
ly subjectively  valid.  Now,  that  may  be  considered 
by  some  persons  to  place  scepticism  on  a  less  easily 
refutable  basis,  but  it  is  certainly  not  a  refutation  of 
it.  The  difference  between  the  conclusion  reached 
by  Kant  through  his  alleged  refutation  of  the  scepti- 
cism which  founds  on  the  assumption  that  all  knowl- 
edge is  derived  from  experience  and  the  conclusion 
of  that  scepticism  itself  is  not  great ;  and,  what  differ- 
ence there  is,  is  not  in  its  favour.  If  our  apprehen- 
sion of  space  and  time  as  necessary  and  objective  be 
only  derivable  from  experience  there  may  be  some 
slight  chance — a  very  slight  one,  I  admit — of  its  be- 
ing legitimately  so  derivable;  but  if  that  apprehen- 
sion, although  a  primary  element  of  the  constitution 
of  the  mind,  is  not  to  be  accepted  as  guaranteeing  that 
space  and  time  are  what  we  necessarily  believe  them 
to  be,  the  legitimacy  of  the  apprehension  is  hopelessly 
beyond  possibility  of  proof. 

Kant  did  not  attempt  to  give  a  comprehensive  an- 
swer to  the  question  raised  by  him  :  How  is  mathemat- 
ical science  possible  ?  He  gave  a  powerful  impulse 
to  the  study  of  the  theory  of  mathematical  knowledge, 
but  made  to  it  no  substantial  contribution  of  his  own. 
By  mathematics  he  virtually  meant  geometry.  And 
the  reasoning  by  which  he  attempted  to  prove  geom- 

183 


AGNOSTICISM    OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

etry  to  be  possible  only  through  space  being  a  priori 
and  subjective  was  inconclusive.  It  sufficed  to  show 
that  the  mind  is  endowed  with  a  jxtwer  of  forming 
geometrical  conceptions  and  drawing  geometrical 
inferences,  and  also  that  that  power,  which  in- 
cludes various  energies  of  intellect,  is  a  priori 
in  the  sense  of  subjective,  but  no  more.  It  entirely 
failed  to  show  what  specially  required  to  be  shown — 
namely,  that  the  space  which  is  presupposed  in  all  the 
operations  of  geometrical  definition,  construction,  and 
inference,  is  a  priori  in  the  sense  of  subjective.  It 
proved  that  the  mind,  in  order  to  be  able  to  trace  the 
relations  of  extension,  must  have  its  thorough  mas- 
tery over  geometrical  conceptions  through  the  posses- 
sion of  the  power  of  constructing  them ;  but  it  simply 
ignored  the  fact  which  is  the  real  difficulty  to  the 
Kantian  hypothesis  in  question — the  fact  that  the 
power  implied  in  every  concept  and  process  of  geom- 
etry assumes  space  to  be  not  constructed  but  given,  to 
be  not  subjective  but  objective,  to  be  not  ideal  merely 
but  real. 

§  II.  Transcendental  Logic  :  {A)  Analytic 

From  Transcendental  ^Esthetic  Kant  passes  to 
Transcendental  Logic,  by  which  he  means  not  what 
is  commonly  called  Logic,  but  a  science  or  exposition 
of  the  pure  and  a  jyi'iori  elements  to  be  found  in  the 
constitution  and  use  of  thought.  Transcendental 
Logic  thus  understood  he  divides  into  Analytic  and 
Dialectic. 

184 


KANT'S  TRANSCENDENTAL  LOGIC 

As  in  the  Transcendental  Esthetic,  he  had  meta- 
physically criticised  the  faculty  of  sense  and  attempt- 
ed to  explain  the  possibility  of  mathematics ;  in  the 
Transcendental  Analytic  he  examines  in  the  same  way 
the  faculty  of  understanding,  and  seeks  to  show  how 
physical  science  is  possible.  In  the  Esthetic  he  had 
allowed  that  phenomena,  through  being  posited  and 
co-ordinated  in  time  and  space, — the  mental  forms 
of  sensibility, — become  knowledge,  although  only 
knowledge  in  its  lowest  and  crudest  form,  "  a  chaos 
of  blurred  perceptions  "  ;  but  denied  that  they  are, 
properly  speaking,  objects  of  thought  until  also  oper- 
ated on  by  the  understanding  and  subjected  to  and 
synthesised  by  its  forms.  In  order  to  be  knowledge 
proper  there  must,  he  maintained,  be  the  union  of 
intuitions  of  sense  with  notions  of  the  understanding. 
The  sensuous  faculty  cannot  think  and  the  judging 
faculty  cannot  perceive.  Neither  faculty  can  do  the 
work  of  the  other,  and  consequently  they  must  com- 
bine and  co-operate  in  order  to  produce  what  may  be 
worthy  of  the  name  of  knowledge. 

Kant's  first  endeavour  in  the  Analytic  is  to  bring 
to  light  all  the  a  priori  elements  which  the  under- 
standing imposes  on  the  perceptions  of  sense  in  order 
to  make  them  intelligible.  Sense  he  had  treated  in 
the  Esthetic  as  essentially  passive.  In  the  Analytic 
he  assumes  understanding  to  be  essentially  active. 
The  intuitions  of  sense  imply  the  receptivity  of  im- 
pression; the  notions  of  the  understanding,  on  the 
contrary,  imply  the  spontaneity  of  thought.  All  the 
operations  of  the  understanding  are  reducible  to  ele- 

185 


AGNOSTICISM   OF  HUME  AND  KANT 

mentary  acts  of  judgment,  and,  consequently,  in  order 
to  know  how  many  primitive  pure  notions  of  the  un- 
derstanding, or  categories,  as  Kant  calls  them,  there 
are,  we  only  require  to  know  how  many  species  or 
forms  of  judgment  there  are.  But  this,  he  thinks, 
we  do  know.  He  accepts  as  firmly  demonstrated  and 
virtually  complete  the  traditional  doctrine  of  judg- 
ment to  be  found  in  all  the  ordinary  text-books  of 
Logic.  Accordingly  he  holds  that  there  are  just  four 
chief  species  of  judgments — those  of  quantity,  qual- 
ity, relation,  and  modality — and  that  each  of  these 
has  three  kinds  of  judgment  under  it,  so  that  there  are 
twelve  sub-species,  neither  more  nor  less,  each  having 
a  distinct  a  priori  condition  underlying  it,  and  only 
one  such,  while  all  are  so  connected  as  to  constitute  a 
general  system  of  a  priori  notions  regulative  of  the 
understanding  within  the  whole  sphere  of  its  opera- 
tions. 

Having  obtained  his  so-called  categories  of  the  un- 
derstanding, Kant  proceeds  to  what  he  found  to  be 
the  most  difficult  task  he  ever  undertook,  the  "  tran- 
scendental deduction  "  of  them,  or,  in  simpler  terms, 
the  showing  that  they  must  apply  to  objects,  and  how, 
and  to  what  extent.  He  starts  by  laying  stress  on  an 
unquestionably  and  supremely  important  fact ;  on  a 
still  higher  principle  than  either  the  forms  of  sen- 
suous intuition  or  the  categories  of  logical  judgment — 
"  the  original  synthetic  unity  of  apperception— the 
combining  self-conscious  activity  of  a  self -identical 
ego,  underlying  alike  all  impressions  of  sense  and  all 
operations  of  judgment."     Without  such  a  centre  of 

186 


ALLEGED  NECESSITY  OF  THE  CATEGORIES 

convergence  and  basis  of  permanence  no  conjunctions 
of  sense  and  understanding  can  be  supposed  to  gener- 
ate knowledge  of  any  kind  or  degree. 

There  follows  what  is  represented  as  "  the  deduc- 
tion "  itself — the  alleged  proof  that  the  categories  are 
necessary  for  the  determination  of  objects,  and  that 
only  objects  obtained  through  sense — contained  in 
sensuous  experience — are  determined  by  the  catego- 
ries. The  aim  of  it  is  obvious  enough,  but  its  success, 
in  my  opinion,  is  nil.  It  is,  even  in  the  second  edi- 
tion, the  merest  semblance  of  a  "  deduction."  In- 
stead of  a  methodical  and  orderly  process  of  argu- 
mentation, there  is  only  a  diffuse,  lumbering,  and 
pointless  repetition  in  uncouth  modes  of  expression 
of  the  doctrine  to  be  proved — namely,  that  the  cate- 
gories, along  with  the  synthetic  unity  of  appercep- 
tion, while  a  priori  and  possessed  of  a  necessary  and 
universal  validity  so  far  as  sensuous  experience  is. 
concerned,  have  no  validity  beyond  it. 

On  the  other  hand,  what  Kant  has  written  in  the 
last  sections  of  the  Analytic  regarding  the  "  Schema- 
tism of  the  Categories,"  "  Axioms  of  Intuition," 
"  Analogies  of  Experience,"  and  "  Postulates  of  Em- 
pirical Thought,"  is,  to  say  the  very  least  of  it,  most 
ingenious  and  suggestive. 

Kant's  exposition  of  the  theory  of  knowledge  strict- 
ly so  called  may  be  considered  as  coming  to  a  close 
with  the  Analytic,  seeing  that  only  sense  and  under- 
standing are  regarded  by  him  as  really  and  directly 
faculties  of  knowledge.  The  reason  dealt  with  in 
the  Dialectic  is  not  such  a  faculty.     It  is  represent- 

187 


AGNOSTICISM  OF   HUME   AND   KANT 

ed  as  indirectly  aiding  the  acquisition  of  knowledge, 
but  also  as  contributing  nothing  of  its  own  to  knowl- 
edge. At  this  point,  therefore,  it  may  be  well  for  me 
to  look  back  for  a  moment  at  the  Kantian  theory  of 
knowledge  and  note  as  briefly  as  possible  some  of  the 
chief  points  or  features  of  it. 

It  has  certain  obvious  merits.  Contrast  it  with 
the  theory  of  knowledge  which  it  was  meant  to  dis- 
place, the  theory  of  Ilume,  and  some  of  them  at  least 
at  once  sautent  aux  yeux.  For  example — (a)  As  re- 
gards recognition  of  the  complexity  of  knowledge,  the 
object  to  be  accounted  for,  Kant  and  Hume  differ 
greatly,  and  the  difference  is  wholly  in  favour  of 
Kant.  Hume's  reduction  of  knowledge  to  isolated 
and  arbitrarily  associated  impressions  of  sense  must 
seem  a  manifest  reductio  ad  absurdum  of  his  analysis 
to  every  one  who  really  sees  what  knowledge  includes 
and  involves.  Its  simplicity  is  sufficient  to  condemn 
it.  It  is  not  so  with  Kant's  analysis,  which  is  far 
more  adequate,  (h)  Kant's  theory  is  also  vastly  su- 
perior to  Hume's  as  regards  recognition  of  the  spon- 
taneity involved  in  knowing.  It  represents  the  un- 
derstanding as  essentially  self-active,  and  lays  stress 
on  an  operation  of  supreme  epistemological  impor- 
tance— "  the  synthetic  unity  of  apperception."  That 
act  Hume  ignored.  He  found  no  place  in  the  cogni- 
tive process,  or  elsewhere  in  the  mind,  for  self-activ- 
ity, (c)  Another  respect  in  which  the  Kantian  the- 
ory excels  the  Humian,  and  all  other  exclusively 
empirical  theories  of  cognition,  is  its  exhibition  of  one 
large  class  of  the  elements  or  constituents  of  knowl- 

188 


HUME  AND   KANT   COMPARED 

edge  as  characterised  hj  necessity  and  universality, 
(d)  Again,  while  Hume  sought  to  show  that  nature 
and  experience  are  not  consistently  interpretable  in 
any  termSj  both  the  ^Esthetic  and  the  Analytic  of 
Kant  tend  throughout  to  prove  that  the  world  as 
known  to  man — the  world  alike  of  ordinary  knowl- 
edge and  of  exact  science,  mathematical  and  physical 
— is  one  which  can  only  be  interpreted  in  terms  of 
mind,  a  truth  of  prime  importance  in  the  controversy 
with  empiricism,  and  with  the  scepticism  based  on 
empiricism,  (e)  And,  further,  although  both  Hume 
and  Kant  did  even  more  to  advance  epistemology  by 
stimulating  others  to  inquiry  than  by  what  they  them- 
selves discovered,  the  suggestiveness  of  the  latter's 
work  was  of  much  the  higher  and  richer  kind.  Hume, 
a  sceptic  by  temperament  as  well  as  in  intellect,  with 
all  his  extraordinary  acuteness,  clearness,  and  subtili- 
ty,  was  the  very  genius  of  negation,  but  only  that;  he 
was  content  to  bring  all  knowledge  into  suspicion,  and 
yet  to  rest  in  his  scepticism.  He  compelled  attention 
to  be  directed  to  the  most  radical  doubts  and  terrible 
questions,  but  gave  no  help  as  to  how  the  doubts  were 
to  be  removed  and  the  questions  answered.  The  good 
David  did  not  feel  at  all  called  upon  to  act  as  "  a  guide 
to  the  perplexed."  Kant,  although  he  so  far  fell  into 
scepticism,  being  not  a  sceptic  either  by  temperament 
or  with  intention,  was  earnestly  anxious  to  overcome 
it,  to  answer  Hume,  and  to  conquer  his  own  deepest 
doubts.  Hence,  although  he  may  justly  be  reckoned 
as  one  of  the  fathers  of  modern  agnosticism,  he  may 
be  also  as  fairly  credited  with  having  done  much  tow- 

189 


AGNOSTICISM   OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

ards  the  refutation  of  it.  His  work  was  as  largely 
constructive  as  destructive.  His  suggestiveness  has 
been,  not  as  Hume's,  negative,  but  positive  in  char- 
acter. Scarcely  another  epistemologist  has  scattered 
abroad  so  many  seminal  thoughts  which  have  taken 
root  and  ripened.  Many  even  of  his  incidental,  or  at 
least  undeveloped,  observations — as,  e.g.,  several  of 
those  to  be  found  in  his  discussion  on  the  categories 
(in  the  Analytic) — ^liave  exercised  an  extraordinary 
influence  on  the  development  of  modern  speculation. 

There  were  so  many  excellent,  ingenious,  and  novel 
ideas  in  Kant's  theory  of  knowledge-  that  it  most  nat- 
urally excited  great  interest  in  the  philosophical 
world,  and  strongly  influenced  the  course  of  philo- 
sophical opinion.  There  are  many  even  now  who 
deem  it,  on  the  whole,  a  satisfactory  doctrine.  As  I 
do  not  share  that  view,  I  must  briefly  indicate  my  ob- 
jections to  it. 

1.  Kant,  in  his  attempt  to  explain  the  possibility  of 
knowledge,  tacitly  assumed  that  he  required  to  have 
to  do  only  with  the  intellect  and  its  powers.  It  was 
an  assumption  very  natural  for  a  man  in  his  time  to 
make,  but  it  was  a  mere  assumption.  In  conjunction 
with  the  crude  view  of  "  faculties  "  prevalent  among 
the  psychologists  of  Kant's  day,  it  led  him  to  treat  his 
whole  subject  in  an  artificial  and  mechanical  fashion. 
He  starts  on  his  investigation  without  any  attempt  to 
determine  either  what  knowledge  is  or  how  it  has  be- 
come what  it  is.  The  deepest  roots  of  knowledge  may 
lie  far  below  so-called  intellectual  powers ;  may  be  the 

190 


KANT'S  THEORY   OF  KNOWLEDGE 

earliest  and  simplest  impulses  of  sentient  and  voli- 
tional consciousness ;  nay,  must  be  so  if  there  be  any 
truth  in  the  modern  doctrine  of  psychological  evolu- 
tion. In  man,  as  in  all  earthly  beings,  learning  to 
know  has  been  chiefly  the  result  of  requiring  to  act. 
No  knowledge  of  any  kind  is  the  product  or  the  prop- 
erty of  any  "  faculty,"  or  group  of  faculties,  or  de- 
partment of  mind.  The  minimum  in  knowledge  is 
a  self  with  an  object  or  objects  in  relation  to  it.  All 
human  knowledge  and  all  growth  in  knowledge  are 
only  possible  and  intelligible  where  there  are  along 
with  objects  entire  minds,  true  selves,  directed  to 
them,  acting  on  them,  and  influenced  by  them.  Kant 
in  the  conduct  of  his  investigation  proceeds  on  lines 
quite  incompatible  with  that  truth.  He  isolates  in- 
telligence from  mind  as  a  whole,  takes  account  only 
of  theoretical  thought  on  the  radically  erroneous  as- 
sumption of  its  being  essentially  distinct  from  practi- 
cal reason,  cuts  off  "  the  sensuous  faculty  "  from  self 
or  mind,  and  separates  it  sharply  even  from  "  the  un- 
derstanding," the  other  faculty  of  knowledge.  In 
all  these  respects  he  seems  to  me  to  have  been  at 
fault. 

2.  After  detaching  and  isolating  sense  in  the  way 
described,  Kant  nevertheless  represents  it  as  supply- 
ing some  sort  of  knowledge,  and  as  even  furnishing 
the  whole  matter  or  content  of  knowledge.  Professor 
Ferrier  has  so  very  effectively  shown  how  serious  an 
error  it  is  to  regard  sense  as  capable  of  itself  yielding 
any  sort  of  intelligible  data  to  the  mind,  and  how 
much  depends  on  making  it  apparent  that  matter 

191 


AGNOSTICISM   OF    HUME  AND   KANT 

per  se  is  contradictory  and  sensuous  'perceptions  per  se 
nonsensical,  that  I  content  myself  with  a  reference  to 
what  he  has  written/  The  assumption  that  the  whole 
matter  or  content  of  knowledge  originates  in  sense- 
perceptions  is  an  error  quite  as  great.  The  matter  or 
content  of  experience,  no  careful  study  of  conscious- 
ness can  fail  to  inform  us,  comes  to  a  far  greater  ex- 
tent from  within  than  from  without.  The  assump- 
tion to  the  contrary  is  a  rashly  adopted  metaphysi- 
cal illusion,  not  an  ascertained  psychological  truth. 
Kant's  acceptance  of  it  made  it  logically  impossible 
for  him  to  escape  from  a  phenomenalism  practically 
as  agnostic  as  the  scepticism  of  Hume  by  the  intro- 
duction of  any  elaborating  machinery  of  forms,  cate- 
gories, and  ideals.  That  he,  nevertheless,  combated 
agnostic  phenomenalism  with  ingenuity  and  profun- 
dity is  also  a  fact,  and  one  which  non-agnostics  will 
gladly  acknowledge;  but  even  a  happy  inconsistency 
is  an  inconsistency,  and  every  inconsistency  is  a 
weakness.  The  hypothesis  of  the  "  Ding  an  sich  " 
is  itself  so  nebulous  and  ambiguous  as  rather  to  in- 
crease than  remove  or  lessen  the  self-contradietoriness 
of  the  general  theory. 

3.  I  have  previously  indicated  why  I  regard 
Kant's  account  of  "  the  forms  of  the  sensory  " — space 
and  time — as  largely  erroneous;  his  opinion  that  he 
either  removed  the  metaphysical  difficulties  connect- 
ed with  them  by  arguing  that  they  are  only  necessary 
conditions  of  phenomena,  or  warded  off  scepticism 
by  maintaining  that  they  are  necessary  conditions,  as 
•  Institutes  of  Metaphysics,  pp.  276-282. 
192 


SENSE  AND  UNDERSTANDINa 

not  well  founded ;  and  what  he  called  his  "  Critical 
Idealism,"  as  far  from  exempt  from  the  faults  which 
he  himself  charged  on  other  forms  of  idealism.  Here 
I  would  add  that  the  only  reason  which  he  has  given 
for  regarding  the  whole  matter  or  content  of  expe- 
rience as  derived  from  impressions  of  sense — namely, 
that  the  categories  of  the  understanding  are  only  ap- 
plicable to  the  objects  of  which  we  gain  experience 
through  sense — is  one  which  is  not  substantiated  by 
any  evidence.  In  reality,  the  categories  are  just  as 
applicable  to  internal  states  as  to  external  phenom- 
ena. Mind,  in  all  its  phases  and  processes,  so  far  as 
these  are  consciously  realised,  is  not  less  capable  of 
being  thought  in  the  pure  immediate  cognitions  of  re- 
lation which  Kant  terms  categories  than  Matter  and 
its  phenomena.  Mind  per  se,  in  the  Kantian  sense, 
of  course  cannot,  but  neither  can  Matter  per  se. 

4.  Objection  must  be  taken  both  to  Kant's  mode  of 
separating  and  of  connecting  sense  and  understand- 
ing. There  can  no  more  be  perception  without  the 
categories  of  the  understanding  than  without  the 
forms  of  sense.  The  former  are  not  merely  superim- 
posed on  perceptions  in  order  to  transform  them  into 
notions;  they  are  implied  in  their  existence  and  even 
in  their  very  possibility  as  perceptions.  The  so-called 
forms  themselves  presuppose  the  so-called  categories. 
Space  cannot  be  apprehended  or  thought  of  as  other 
than  quantitative,  relative  (to  its  o-\vn  parts  or  to 
other  things),  reul,  and  necessary;  in  other  words,  ex- 
cept as  presupposing  the  categories  which  it  is  repre- 
sented as  preceding  and  conditioning.     Kant's  sepa- 

193 


AGNOSTICISM   OF    HUME  AND   KANT 

ration  of  sense  and  understanding,  and  of  the  forms 
of  the  one  and  the  categories  of  the  other,  is  psycho- 
logically unnatural  and  exaggerated.  It  is  of  a  one- 
sidedness  and  rigidity  altogether  mechanical.  His 
way  of  connecting  them  is  equally  mechanical,  equally 
of  a  kind  inappropriate  to  spirit.  Hegel  sarcastical- 
ly, yet  correctly,  described  it  as  "  such  an  external  and 
sui)erficial  union  as  when  a  piece  of  wood  and  a  leg 
are  boimd  together  by  a  cord." 

5.  According  to  Kant  sense  is  essentially  passive 
and  understanding  essentially  active.  In  thinking 
so  he  was,  I  believe,  mistaken.  Wholly  passive  eyes, 
ears,  and  finger-tips,  if  they  see,  hear,  or  feel  at  all, 
assuredly  see,  hear,  and  feel  very  little.  In  order  to 
be  media  of  information  the  senses  must  be  largely 
active  and  operative.  The  understanding,  on  the  oth- 
er hand,  is  not  essentially  self -active.  It  must  more 
or  less  passively  receive  its  matter  or  content,  and  be 
acted  on  thereby.  It  is  the  self  alone  which  is  self- 
active.  The  understanding  is  only  active  in  so  far 
as  it  is  actively  exercised  by  the  self.  Were  it  es- 
sentially self-active,  however,  sense  must  be  so  too, 
inasmuch  as  every  sense-perception  includes  a  judg- 
ment, an  act  of  understanding. 

6.  Kant's  identification  of  the  understanding  with 
judgment  has  been  allowed  to  pass  almost  (not  en- 
tirely) uncriticised.  His  distribution  of  judgments 
into  analytic  and  synthetic,  on  the  other  hand,  has 
been  much  controverted,  especially  during  recent 
years,  with  the  result  that  the  logic  of  judgment  is 
far  from  the  point  at  which  it  was  when  Kant  wrote, 

194 


THE  UNDERSTANDING  AND  JUDGMENT 

\Yithout  bis  doctrine  of  knowledge  being,  perhaps, 
greatly  affected.  He  was  certainly  not  bappy  in  his 
choice  of  instances  of  synthetic  judgments.  Philo- 
sophical speculation  was  immensely  and  beneficially 
influenced  by  his  doctrine  of  the  categories.  But  that 
it  was  far  from  being  a  satisfactory  doctrine  is  now  al- 
most universally  recognised.  The  procedure  by  which 
the  categories  were  obtained  was  perfunctory;  and 
the  enumeration,  classification,  and  correlation  of 
them  are  all  liable  to  obvious  objections.  Any  real 
'^  deduction  "  of  them  was  manifestly  impossible  if 
they  really  were  the  primary  and  ultimate  modes  of 
judgment  which  Kant  represented  them  to  be.  The 
conclusion  of  the  so-called  "  deduction "  which  is 
given  is  a  conclusion  of  the  very  kind  which  Kant  la- 
bours to  prove  must  be  of  its  very  nature  unprovable ; 
a  metaphysical  conclusion  such  as  he  professes  to 
show  lies  beyond  the  reach  of  all  possible  knowledge. 

7.  The  reason  which  Kant  gave  for  concluding  that 
the  categories  must  be  applicable  to  the  phenomena 
of  sense — namely,  that  otherwise  there  would  be  no 
orderly,  definite,  universal  experience,  and  conse- 
quently no  intelligibility  in  experience — ^was  an  ob- 
vious petitio  principiij  when  employed  as  the  basis  of 
an  argument  against  a  scepticism  like  that  of  Hume, 
which  professed  to  have  logically  reached  the  conclu- 
sion that  there,  in  reality,  was  no  intelligibility  in 
experience,  and  no  room  for  ascribing  any  more  to  it 
than  such  an  illusory  appearance  of  order  and  ob- 
jectivity as  associations  of  custom  and  contingency 
may   produce.     He  failed  carefully  to   discuss  the 

195 


AGNOSTICISM   OF   HUME  AND  KANT 

question,  Can  pure  a  priori  notions  be  reasonably  sup- 
posed to  operate  on,  and  to  transform  and  elevate  into 
intelligibility,  such  confused  and  chaotic  matter  as 
sense-impressions  derived  from  no  known  or  knowa- 
ble  what  or  where  ?  Must  it  not  be  as  unwarranted 
to  bring  the  categories  into  connection  with  such  per- 
ceptions as  into  connection  with  things-in-themselves  ? 
One  of  the  earliest  and  acutest  of  Kant's  critics,  Solo- 
mon Maimon,  conclusively  showed,  I  think,  that  here 
was  a  fatally  weak  point  in  the  Kantian  theory ;  and 
that,  on  Kant's  own  principles,  the  sphere  of  knowl- 
edge should  have  been  limited  to  mathematics,  and 
all  objective  validity  and  intelligibility  denied  to  the 
contents  of  sense,  seeing  that  in  them  there  is  no  ne- 
cessity, no  universality,  nor  affinity  of  any  kind  to 
the  categories  of  thought.  Maimon  did  not  oppose 
to  the  criticism  of  Kant  the  scepticism  which  he 
himself  professed.  What  he  did  was  to  maintain 
that  his  scepticism  was  the  only  true  basis  of  the 
criticism  at  which  Kant  aimed  but  failed  to  reach; 
that  not  merely  the  forms  but  also  the  objects  of 
knowledge  must  be  a  priori  in  us  if  we  are  to  be  en- 
titled to  ascribe  to  them  objective  validity,  seeing  that 
objects  cannot  be  generated  by  thought  in  the  empiri- 
cal as  in  the  mathematical  sphere.  His  argumenta- 
tion, it  appears  to  me,  was  incontrovertible. 

8.  Kant  erred  in  referring  all  universality  and 
necessity  in  cognition  to  an  a  priori  and  subjective 
origin.  It  was  an  error  which  naturally  followed 
from  his  assumption  that  the  content  of  knowledge 
consists  wholly  of  particular  and  contingent  sense- 

196 


VALUE   OF  KANT^S  LABOUES 

perceptions.  That  left  him  without  any  other  de- 
fence against  the  most  absolute  scepticism  than  what 
he  could  find  in  the  ego  alone.  Hence  he  toiled  so 
earnestly  to  find  in  the  forms  and  categories  of 
thought  the  grounds  of  assurance  in  a  real  validity  of 
knowledge  and  an  at  least  apparent  objectivity  in 
things.  His  labour  was  certainly  not  in  vain.  It 
showed  more  convincingly  and  comprehensively  than 
had  ever  been  done  before  how  much  more  is  implied 
even  in  a  knowledge  of  objects  of  sense  than  mere  sen- 
sations ;  and  in  that  way  and  to  that  extent  it  effected 
a  satisfactory  refutation  of  sensism  and  of  the  scepti- 
cism which  depends  on  it.  It  was  also,  however,  la- 
bour which,  instead  of  confirming,  virtually  dis- 
proved the  assumption  on  which  it  proceeded — the 
empiricist  assumption  that  the  subject  and  object  in 
cognition  are  not  organically  one  but  mechanically 
distinct.  The  chief  value  of  Kant's  elaborate  proc- 
ess of  investigation  and  argumentation  really  lies, 
paradoxical  as  the  statement  may  appear,  in  its  be- 
ing a  continuous  course  of  self -refutation.  The  great 
conclusion  to  be  drawn  from  it  is  not  the  one  which 
was  expressed,  but  one  which  is  throughout  suggested 
to  us  by  it — namely,  the  truth  that  knowledge  is  a 
process  in  which  subject  and  object  so  correspond,  re- 
ciprocate, and  harmonise  that  each  is  only  known  in 
and  through  the  other,  and  in  which  what  Kant  called 
forms  of  sense  and  categories  of  judgment  are  simply 
constitutive  conditions  of  intelligence  in  virtue  of 
which  the  knowing  subject  is  able  directly  and  truly 
to  apprehend  what  actually  and  truly  exists  in  known 

197 


AGNOSTICISM    OF    HUME  AND   KANT 

objects.  The  phenomenalism  and  representationism 
of  Kant  caused  him  to  ignore  that  truth,  but  his  tre- 
mendous yet  fruitless  efforts  to  vindicate  the  validity 
or  show  the  possibility  of  knowledge  without  the  ac- 
ceptance of  it  are,  perhaps,  more  instructive  and  con- 
clusive than  his  advocacy  of  it  would  have  been. 

9.  I  shall  merely  add  that  Kant  in  his  criticism  of 
knowledge  should  surely  have  introduced  "  the  syn- 
thetic unity  of  apperception  "  at  a  much  earlier  stage 
than  he  did.  It  is  not  the  cope-stone  but  the  corner- 
stone of  a  theory  of  knowledge,  being  essential  to  the 
very  existence  and  conceivability  of  knowledge;  and 
the  theory  of  knowledge,  as  of  everything  else,  should 
begin  with  what  is  primary  and  fundamental.  If 
Kant  had  paid  due  regard  to  the  fact  that  cognition  is 
in  no  form  or  stage  conceivable  otherwise  than  as  a 
synthetic  act  of  a  self -active  subject,  he  would  not 
have  started  on  an  inquiry  into  the  possibility  and 
conditions  of  knowledge  by  |x>siting  unhnoiuahles, — 
with  which  a  theory  of  knowledge  can  have  nothing  to 
do, — and  appearances — of  what  does  not  appear; — 
nor  would  he  liave  separated  in  the  abstract  and  me- 
chanical way  which  he  did  noumena  and  phenomena, 
matter  and  form,  sense  and  understanding,  experience 
and  reason,  knowledge  and  reality,  the  sensuous  and 
suprasensuou^. 

§  III.  Transcendentat.  Logic  :  (B)  Dialectic 

In  passing  from  Transcendental  Analytic  to  Tranr 
scendental  Dialectic  Kant  passes  from  the  second  to 

198 


KANT'S   TKANSCENDENTAL   DIALECTIC 

the  third  intellectual  faculty,  from  the  understanding 
to  the  reason,  taken  not  in  the  general  sense  in  which 
Kant  sometimes  employs  it  but  in  its  restricted  and 
distinctive  sense.  In  this  latter  sense  reason,  accord- 
ing to  Kant,  is  the  faculty  which  reduces  judgment 
to  unity  in  virtue  of  its  continually  striving  to  rise 
above  the  domain  of  exj^erience,  the  sphere  of  sense, 
to  the  suprasensuous  and  unconditioned.  As  sense 
manifests  itself  in  perceptions,  and  understanding  in 
judgments,  so  does  reason  in  conclusions.  As  sense 
has  its  forms,  and  understanding  its  categories,  so  has 
reason  its  ideas.  As  the  perceptions  of  sense  can  only 
be  made  subjects  of  intelligence  through  the  activity 
of  the  understanding,  so  can  the  axioms  of  the  under- 
standing only  be  reduced  to  unity  through  the  opera- 
tion of  the  reason. 

Reason, — the  faculty  of  the  unconditioned,  the  in- 
finite, the  absolute, — has,  according  to  Kant,  three 
ideas;  and,  just  as  he  had  derived  the  categories  of 
the  understanding  from  the  twelve  kinds  of  judg- 
ment, so  he  derives  the  ideas  of  reason  from  the  three 
forms  of  the  syllogism, — the  categorical,  the  hypo- 
thetical, and  the  disjunctive.  The  three  ideas  are  the 
Soul,  the  World,  and  God.  And  on  each  of  them,  he 
holds,  there  has  been  built  up  by  the  reason  a  meta- 
physical system  of  doctrine  erroneously  claiming  to 
be  a  science :  on  the  idea  of  the  absolute  unity  of  the 
thinking  subject,  the  soul,  the  so-called  science  of  Ra- 
tional Psychology  ;  on  the  idea  of  the  absolute  totality 
of  phenomena,  the  universe,  the  so-called  science  of 
Rational  Cosmology;  and  on  the  ideal  of  absolute 

199 


AGNOSTICISM   OF   HUME  AND  KANT 

reality,  God,  the  so-called  science  of  Rational  The- 
ology. 

That  reason,  taken  in  its  distinctive  sense,  pos- 
sesses those  ideas,  means,  according  to  Kant,  that  the 
mind  from  the  very  nature  of  its  intellectual  constitu- 
tion necessarily  assumes  the  unity  of  the  soul,  the  ex- 
istence of  the  universe,  and  the  reality  of  a  First 
Cause.  At  the  same  time,  he  maintains  that  those 
assumptions,  although  necessary  assumptions,  are 
merely  assumptions,  and  not  to  be  accepted  as  pos- 
itive truths  or  to  have  any  objective  value  assigned 
to  them.  We  necessarily  seem,  he  thinks,  to  knov^ 
what  reason  compels  us  to  believe,  and  are  in- 
evitably led  to  credit  its  conclusions  and  to  ascribe 
validity  to  its  arguments;  but,  in  reality,  we  do  not 
Jcnow  what  we  necessarily  seem  to  know  and  cannot 
but  believe,  and  the  conclusions  of  reason  are  all,  in 
fact,  illusions,  and  its  arguments  are  all,  to  use  his 
own  words,  "  as  regards  their  result,  rather  to  be 
termed  sophisms  than  syllogisms,  although  indeed  as 
regards  their  origin  they  are  very  well  entitled  to  the 
latter  name,  inasmuch  as  they  are  not  fictions  or 
accidental  products  of  reason,  hut  are  necessitated 
by  its  very  nature, — sophisms  not  of  men,  but  of  pure 
reason  itself,  from  which  the  wisest  cannot  free  him- 
self." 

While  Kant  represents  reason — pure  reason — as  an 
essentially  illusory  faculty,  he  does  not  admit  it  to 
be,  as  Sir  William  Hamilton  affirms,  "  an  organ  of 
mere  delusion."  He  expressly  denies  it  to  be  essen- 
tially delusive,  and  maintains  that  it  only  becomes  a 

200 


ILLUSIONS  AND   DELUSIONS 

source  of  fallacies  and  deceptions  when  not  confined 
to  its  legitimate  sphere.  He  says  in  express  terms 
"  it  must  be  the  mere  abuse  of  the  ideas  of  reason 
which  cause  them  to  generate  in  our  minds  a  decep- 
tive appearance ;  "  and  often  repeats  the  statement 
in  substance.  He  distinguishes  between  illusions 
and  delusions,  and  attributes  only  the  former  to  the 
natural  operation  of  reason.  The  illusions  of  rea- 
son, he  affirms,  although  they  cannot  be  prevented 
from  arising,  can  be  detected  and  prevented  from  im- 
posing on  us.  They  are,  he  contends,  liJce  the  illu- 
sions of  sense.  The  moon  near  the  horizon  seems 
larger  than  when  overhead.  This  is  an  illusion  of 
perception  which  cannot  be  got  rid  of  but  which  can 
be  detected,  so  that  it  does  not  mislead  or  prove  our 
senses  to  be  deceptive  and  mendacious.  Nor  is  rea- 
son, according  to  Kant,  without  a  legitimate  and  use- 
ful function.  On  the  contrary,  he  holds  that  its  ideas 
have  a  valuable  regulative  purpose.  They  call  forth 
and  urge  on  empirical  inquiry;  and  although  they 
impel  men  to  search  for  the  undiscoverable,  the  un- 
knowable, the  energy  and  the  efforts  thus  elicited 
greatly  contribute  to  the  extension  and  organising  of 
human  knowledge. 

The  general  view  taken  of  reason  by  Kant  has  now 
been  stated.  Is  it  a  rational  one,  or  has  Kant  justified 
it?  I  answer  in  the  negative,  and  on  such  grounds 
as  the  following: — 

1.  The  very  conception  of  a  special  faculty  for  the 
production  of  inevitable  illusions  is  a  most  unnatural 
and  improbable  one.     Is  there  any  other  faculty  of 

201 


AGNOSTICISM   OF   HUME  AND  KANT 

the  kind  in  the  world  either  of  beasts  or  of  men  ?  Is 
it  not  so  abnormal  and  absurd  a  sort  of  power  as  to 
have  a  strong  prima  facie  evidence  against  the  as- 
sumption of  its  existence  ?  There  is  no  other  mental 
faculty  merely  of  illusions.  There  is  no  other  fac- 
ulty of  necessary  and  constitutional  illusions.  The 
so-called  illusions  of  sense  are  casual  or  easily  explic- 
able, and  most  unlike  those  ascribed  by  Kant  to  rea- 
son. It  would  be  a  violation  of  the  laws  of  optics,  a 
continuous  and  needless  miracle,  were  the  moon  not 
to  appear  larger  on  the  horizon  than  when  overhead. 
Obviously  Kant  required  to  prove  that  human  knowl- 
edge could  only  be  unified  and  systematised  by  an  ex- 
clusively and  inevitably  illusory  faculty;  that  sense, 
understanding,  and  imagination  with  its  idealising 
power,  impelled  by  curiosity  and  the  wants  of  prac- 
tical life,  and  controlled  and  directed  by  enlightened 
and  energetic  will,  would  not  have  sufficed  for  the 
purpose.  But  that  he  failed  to  do.  Looked  at  from 
a  teleological  point  of  view,  the  pure  reason  of  Kant 
is  plainly  an  anomaly  in  the  universe.  According  to 
his  own  description  of  it,  it  is  a  power  which  strives 
to  rise  above  experience  and  to  rest  in  the  uncondi- 
tioned, or,  in  other  words,  one  the  aim  of  which  is 
essentially  unattainable,  the  objects  of  which  can 
never  be  discovered  to  correspond  to  anything  real. 
Now,  we  know  of  no  power  like  that  in  the  universe ; 
wherever  we  find  a  natural  power  we  find  also  a  real 
and  appropriate  sphere  for  its  display.  The  exist- 
ence of  any  instinctive  craving  or  constitutional  ten- 
dency is  itself  a  guarantee  of  the  existence  of  due  sat- 

»08 


DOCTRINE   OP  REASON  EXAMINED 

isfaction  for  it.  If  so,  Kant  had,  of  course,  no  right 
to  posit  or  postulate  such  a  reason  as  that  which  he 
called  pure  reason. 

2.  The  utility  of  what  Kant  calls  pure  reason  is 
not  satisfactorily  established  by  him.  Let  us  grant 
all  that  he  has  said  in  its  favour.  Let  us  grant  that 
it  gives  greater  unity  and  completeness  to  our  knowl- 
edge, and  let  us  estimate  the  advantage  of  that  as  high 
as  we  reasonably  can.  Has  it  not,  however,  disad- 
vantages ?  Are  there  not  evils  which  flow  naturally 
and  necessarily  from  its  operation  ?  Yes,  and  on 
Kant's  own  showing,  those  disadvantages  and  evils 
are  numerous  and  enormous.  They  comprehend  all 
sorts  of  superstitions  and  aberrations,  all  false  relig- 
ions and  all  false  philosophies.  Can  the  good  ascribed 
to  pure  reason  be  fairly  held  to  counterbalance  or  even 
to  equal  such  a  mass  of  evil  ? 

3.  There  are  serious  intrinsic  defects  in  Kant's 
doctrine  of  reason  which  take  away  from  its  credibil- 
ity: (a)  For  example,  it  is  only  as  a  faculty,  not  in- 
deed of  delusion,  but  of  illusion,  that  pure  reason 
is,  even  according  to  Kant's  account,  of  any  use.  Its 
influence  within  what  he  calls  its  legitimate  sphere  is 
due  entirely  to  its  operation  within  what  he  calls  its 
illegitimate  sphere.  It  is  in  virtue  of  the  assumption 
that  it  possesses  what  it  does  not  possess,  the  princi- 
ples of  a  knowledge  of  the  unconditioned,  that  it  per- 
forms the  work  on  the  conditioned  which  is  alone  of 
value,  (b)  Again,  the  very  existence  of  pure  reason 
as  a  faculty  depends,  according  to  Kant's  view  of  it, 
on  the  illusions  which  it  entertains.     Remove  them 

203 


AGNOSTICISM   OF   HUME  AND  KANT 

and  you  destroy  the  reason  itself.  Thoroughly  con- 
vince a  man  that  he  can  know  only  the  conditioned, 
which  is  all  according  to  Kant  that  he  really  can 
know,  and  reason  must  vanish  along  with  the  illusion 
of  the  unconditioned.  From  that  time  onward  sense 
and  understanding  must  be  the  only  cognitive  powers 
of  that  man's  mind,  (c)  And  further,  what  Kant 
speaks  of  as  the  illegitimate  sphere  of  reason  is,  in 
reality,  and  also  according  to  his  own  account,  its 
only  proper  sphere.  Reason  in  its  distinctive  sense 
as  described  by  himself  is  only  reason  when  it  oper- 
ates on  and  with  ideas  of  the  unconditioned,  or,  in 
other  words,  with  ideas  which  are  illusions  and  out  of 
which  only  illusions  can  be  evolved.  Its  ideas  pro- 
mote the  cause  of  truth  only  by  calling  forth  efforts 
of  intellect  which  serve  to  systematise  and  develop 
knowledge;  but  the  sphere  of  such  efforts  is  plainly 
not,  as  Kant  says,  the  legitimate  sphere  of  reason, 
seeing  that,  although  they  have  been  called  forth  by 
illusions  as  to  the  unconditioned,  they  must  be  kept 
free  from  all  such  illusions  in  order  to  be  successful. 
They  must  be  guided  entirely  by  principles  of  the 
conditioned  if  they  are  to  help  to  the  apprehension  of 
truth.  To  associate  an  idea  of  the  reason  with  expe- 
rience is,  according  to  Kant's  own  teaching,  to  corrupt 
and  destroy  knowledge.  In  other  words,  the  sphere 
\7hich  Kant  is  forced  to  assign  to  reason  as  its  legiti- 
mate sphere  of  action  because  there  is  no  other  credit- 
able one  to  which  to  assign  it,  belongs  wholly  to  the 
understanding,  and  for  reason  there  is  reserved  only 
the  sphere  of  illusions.     Such  a  doctrine  of  reason 

204 


KANT'S  PURE  REASON 

refutes  itself  by  its  inconsistencies,  its  self-contradic- 
tions. 

4.  The  so-called  pure  reason  of  Kant  is  a  quite 
imaginary  faculty.  The  human  mind  has  no  such 
faculty.  It  was  the  great  illusion  of  Kant  to  sup- 
pose that  it  had.  Reason  is  the  faculty  of  all  intui- 
tion proper,  or  of  all  that  is  necessary  and  universal 
either  in  perceptive  or  intellectual  cognition.  It  has 
no  such  ideas  exclusively  inherent  in  it,  however,  as 
the  soul,  the  world,  and  God.  These  are  the  three 
fundamental  objects  of  thought,  the  three  great  reali- 
ties to  which  all  human  knowledge  is  related.  They 
are  not  properly  speaking  either  mere  ideas  or  mere 
ideals.  We  may,  indeed,  speak  of  God  as  the  idea 
of  ideas,  the  ideal  of  ideals,  but  only  intelligently 
when  we  then  also  think  of  Him  as  the  ens  realissi- 
nium,  the  source  of  all  existence  and  energy,  truth 
and  goodness.  As  mere  ideas  the  soul,  world,  and 
God  are  empty  notions.  Individuals  may  have  fan- 
cied that  they  had  one  or  other  or  all  of  these  so-called 
ideas  through  a  transcendent  act  of  a  special  faculty 
apart  from  all  experience,  but  the  fancies  of  a  few 
confused  metaphysicians  should  not  be  charged  upon 
the  reason  itself.  The  so-called  ideas  of  the  so-called 
pure  reason  of  Kant  are  none  of  them  original  ele- 
ments or  first  principles  of  the  reason  which  is  really 
a  faculty  of  the  human  mind.  They  are  none  of 
them  attained  independently  of  experience  but  in  and 
through  experience.  The  vast  majority  of  psycholo- 
gists, cosmologists,  and  theologians  have  been  under 
no  such  delusion  as  that  they  could  raise  sciences  on 

206 


AGNOSTICISM    OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

their  mere  intuitive  ideas  of  the  soul,  the  world,  and 
God. 

Owing  to  Kant  having  conceived  of  pure  or  specu- 
lative reason  in  the  way  which  he  did,  his  criticism 
of  it  is  not  really  a  criticism  of  human  reason  or  of 
any  truly  reasonable  kind  of  philosophy,  but  mainly 
of  Wolfian  rationalism,  and  unfortunately,  also  a 
criticism  which  proceeds  to  a  large  extent  on  the  erro- 
neous principles  of  that  form  of  rationalism. 

As  I  have  already  said,  Kant  assigns  to  reason  three 
ideas  and  represents  it  as  raising  up  on  each  of  them 
a  pretended  science, — on  the  idea  of  the  soul  Rational 
Psychology,  on  the  idea  of  the  world  Rational  Cos- 
mology, and  on  the  idea  of  God  Rational  Theology. 
He  further  maintains  that  in  the  erection  of  these 
speculative  structures  reason  employs  as  many  kinds 
of  inherently  vicious  arguments  as  it  has  ideas — 
namely,  paralogisms  which  relate  to  the  psychological 
idea,  antinomies  which  relate  to  the  cosmological  idea, 
and  ideals  which  relate  to  the  theological  idea.  To 
exhibit  and  expose  these  paralogisms,  antinomies, 
and  ideals,  and  to  destroy  the  doctrines  or  systems 
with  which  they  are  associated,  is  the  task  which  he 
endeavours  to  accomplish  in  his  Transcendental  Dia- 
lectic. 

I.  Rational  Psychology.  Kant  undertakes  first 
to  show  the  futility  of  the  inferences  as  to  the  nature 
of  the  soul  which  have  been  drawn  from  the  charac- 
teristics, of  consciousness.  He  finds  them  all  to  be 
vitiated  by  confounding  a  merely  logical  subject  with 

306 


KANT'S   RATIONAL    PSYCHOLOGY 

a  real  thing,  and  so  to  be  paralogisms,  or  unconscious 
sophisms. 

The  root  of  all  mental  action  is  represented  by  him 
as  being  the  conscious  judgment  /  think.  This  I 
think  is  the  expression  of  pure  consciousness,  its  pri- 
mary form,  and  it  unifies  and  renders  possible  all 
experience.  Wherever  thought  or  consciousness  is, 
there  is  immediately  felt  to  be  an  /  which  is  (1)  a 
determining  subject,  (2)  simple,  (3)  self -identical 
amidst  all  the  variety  of  mental  states,  and  (4)  dis- 
tinct from  all  objects  external  to  itself.  It  is  on  this 
basis  that  Rational  Psychology  is  raised,  and  the 
way  in  which  it  is  raised  is,  according  to  Kant,  the 
conversion  of  the  characteristics  of  the  act  through 
which  consciousness  is  realised  into  ontological  predi- 
cates, and  so  making  of  the  mere  feeling  or  concep- 
tion of  conscious  unity  a  real  soul,  a  substance,  a  sim- 
ple substance,  a  spiritual  substance,  an  indestructible 
or  immortal  substance,  and  the  like,  all  of  which  dog- 
mas are  due  to  transforming  the  determinations  of  a 
merely  phenomenal  subject  into  the  properties  of  a 
transcendental  object,  and  bring  the  same  terms  self 
or  soul  to  denote  two  entirely  distinct  entities,  a  sub- 
jective and  an  objective,  a  logical  and  a  real,  ego. 
Hence  all  the  alleged  proofs  of  a  soul  or  spirit  include 
a  quaternio  terminorum.  In  fact,  the  existence  of  a 
soul  or  spirit,  self  or  ego,  distinct  from  the  body  or 
more  than  a  feeling  of  the  unity  of  consciousness, 
cannot  possibly  be  either  proved  or  disproved. 

The  criticism  of  Kant  in  this  portion  of  his 
"  Transcendental  Dialectic  "  was  not  without  consid- 

207 


AGNOSTICISM    OF   HUME  AND  KANT 

erable  relevancy  against  a  sort  of  psychology  preva- 
lent in  Germany  when  he  wrote,  although  even  then 
falling  into  discredit.  It  was  so  far  effective  against 
the  "  Kational  Psychology  "  of  Wolf  and  his  follow- 
ers. And  yet  it  proceeded  throughout  on  the  position 
of  a  dualism  akin  to,  and  at  least  as  irrational  as,  the 
dualism  which  was  Wolf's  radical  error.  It  assumed 
two  "  egos,"  one  a  logical  subject  and  the  other  a  real 
thing,  and  two  "  psychologies,"  one  rational  and  the 
other  empirical,  one  a  pseudo-science  and  the  other  a 
true  science.  That,  however,  was  an  assumption 
which  begged  everything,  and  which  Kant  had  no 
right  to  make.  It  has  received  no  confirmation  from 
himself  or  from  others.  His  subjective  "  ego,"  his 
merely  logical  subject,  is  a  figment  of  abstraction  to 
which  nothing  corresponds,  and  his  unknowable  on- 
tological  "  ego  "  is  another  of  the  same.  There  is  in 
man  but  a  single  ego,  and  that  ego  is  neither  of  those 
imagined  by  Kant,  but  a  real,  living,  self-perceptive, 
and  self -active  agent.  It  is  the  ego  alike  of  conscious 
experience  and  of  true  psychological  science.  There 
are  not  two  "  psychologies."  Wolf  and  Kant  both 
erred  in  supposing  that  there  were.  The  Kantian 
form  of  the  error  is  no  improvement  on  the  Wolfian. 
Unsatisfactory  as  may  be  the  notion  of  a  really  "  ra- 
tional psychology  "  distinct  from  empirical  psychol- 
ogy, the  notion  of  a  necessarily  illusory  one  distinct 
from  it  must  surely  be  as  unsatisfactory.  Both  notions 
are,  however,  forms  of  the  same  error,  and  have  been 
arguments  have  precisely  the  same  defects  as  those 
supported  by  the  same  kind  of  reasoning.     Kant's 

208 


KANT'S  TREATMENT   OF  SENSE 

which  he  condemned — namely,  a  word  used  in  a 
double  sense,  and  in  each  syllogism  a  quatemio  termi- 
norum.  The  difference  between  them  and  those  he 
assailed  lay  not  in  their  character  but  in  their  appli- 
cation. His  criticism  should  have  been  applied  not 
only  to  Wolfian  rationalism  in  regard  to  the  soul  but 
to  his  own  critical  doctrine  also.  Or,  as  Hegel  puts 
it^  "  he  fell  into  contradiction  from  the  barbarity  of 
the  conceptions  which  he  refutes,  and  the  barbarity 
of  those  which  he  retains  from  among  those  that  are 
refuted." 

He  adhered,  however,  only  too  consistently  to  the 
most  fatally  erroneous  of  his  principles,  denial  to  the 
mind  of  true  perceptive  power  or  immediate  appre- 
hension of  reality.  He  began  his  "  Critique  "  by 
treating  sense  as  a  mere  receptacle  of  impressions, 
needing  to  be  somehow  organised  and  objectified  by 
mental  forms  and  categories,  but  the  causes  of  which, 
if  they  have  causes,  are  not  causes  or  objects  really 
perceived,  but,  on  the  contrary,  imperceptible  and 
unknowable.  Having  begun  by  thus  misrepresenting 
the  testimony  of  consciousness  and  sense-perception, 
it  was  just  what  was  to  be  expected  that  he  would 
treat  the  testimony  of  self-consciousness  and  intro- 
spection in  the  same  way.  Had  he  allowed  that  his 
phenomenal  ego  was  apprehended  as  an  actual  self, 
as  more  than  a  feeling  or  conception  to  which  no  real 
self  corresponds,  he  would  have  been  manifestly  in- 
consistent. And  to  what  could  it  on  his  view  corre- 
spond? Certainly  not  to  his  transcendental  ego,  for 
that,  if  there  be  any  such  thing,  must  be  a  "  thing- 

209 


ACtNOSTICISM    of   HUME  AND   KANT 

in-itself,"  and  unknowable.  Such  inconsistency  he 
cannot  be  charged  with.  He  concedes  to  what  we  call 
self-consciousness  no  intuition  of  self  or  genuine 
knowledge  of  self  as  a  reality.  He  represents  the 
ego  as  being  for  consciousness  a  mere  feeling  of  activ- 
ity ultimately  referring  to  a  conception  of  unity. 
There  is  nothing  more  in  it,  according  to  his  view, 
than  the  feeling  and  conception.  But  he  thereby  re- 
jected the  testimony  of  consciousness  at  its  clearest, 
and  logically  involved  himself  in  a  scepticism  the 
most  absolute,  from  which  he  had  to  try  to  deliver 
himself  by  faith,  a  faith  irreconcilable  with  his  crit- 
ical philosophy.  The  truth  of  truths  as  to  knowledge 
is  the  one  so  ingeniously  and  eloquently  expounded 
and  applied  by  Ferrier  in  his  Institutes  of  Metaphys- 
ics,— the  truth  that,  along  with  whatever  is  known, 
self  or  the  ego  is  also  and  necessarily  known.  This 
knowledge  of  self  inseparable  from  all  knowledge 
whatsoever,  the  condition  of  all  human  exj^erience, 
the  source  of  psychology,  and  the  corner-stone  of  epis- 
temology,  is  a  knowledge  at  once  real  and  relative. 
Kant  went  so  far  as  to  try  to  show  that  being  always 
relative  to  objects  it  could  not  be  itself  knowledge  of 
reality,  but  his  attempt  was  feeble  in  the  extreme, 
and  fairly  deserved  Hegel's  sarcasm  that  it  amounted 
to  maintaining  that  a  man  cannot  know  himself  be- 
cause he  cannot  take  his  self,  his  ego,  in  his  hands, 
and  see  it,  and  smell  it. 

II.  Rational  Cosmology.  In  this  section  of  Tran- 
scendental Dialectic,  Kant  endeavours  to  show  that 
reason  founding  on  the  idea  of  the  universe — i.e.,  of 

210 


KANT'S   RATIONAL   COSMOLOGY 

the  absolute  totality  of  phenomena — and  seeking  to 
comprehend  the  world  as  unconditioned,  necessarily 
builds  up  a  pseudo-science  like  that  rested  on  the  idea 
of  the  soul.  In  the  latter,  reason  had  been  shown,  he 
held,  to  involve  itself  in  paralogisms.  When  occu- 
pied speculatively  with  the  universe  it  leads,  he  ar- 
gues, to  antinomies  or  dilemmas  which  can  neither  be 
evaded  nor  dogmatically  solved.  Of  these  there  are 
neither  more  nor  less  than  four,  because  there  are 
just  so  many  leading  categories  of  the  understanding, 
and  each  of  them  is  extensible  beyond  experience. 
Hence,  in  quantity  the  world  is  either  bounded  by  a 
limit  in  time  and  space  or  unbounded ;  in  quality  it 
is  either  ultimately  simple  or  infinitely  divisible ;  in 
relation  it  is  either  caused  by  free  activity  or  made 
up  of  an  infinite  series  of  mechanical  causes ;  and  in 
modality  it  has  either  an  independent  cause  or  is  com- 
posed of  mutually  dependent  members.  These  are 
Kant's  famous  antinomies.  And  he  not  only  main- 
tains that  the  antithetic  positions  may  in  each  case  be 
equally  demonstrated,  but  shows  us  how  it  may  be 
done.  In  other  words,  he  gives  us  what  he  professes 
to  be  equally  good  and  complete  demonstrations  for 
holding  both  that  the  world  had  and  had  not  a  begin- 
ning in  time;  both  that  it  is  ultimately  simple  and 
infinitely  divisible;  both  that  it  is  produced  by  free 
agency  and  by  an  infinite  series  of  necessitated  ante- 
cedents; and  both  subject  to  and  exempt  from  the 
condition  of  causality. 

Were  he  correct,  reason  would  seem  to  be  left  in  a 
very  desperate  plight.     If  all  its  attempts  to  under- 

211 


AGNOSTICISM    OF   HUME   AND  KANT  . 

stand  the  universe  result  in  contradictory  yet  equally 
well-established  conclusions,  it  would  itself  appear 
to  be  essentially  self-contradictory  and  doomed  to 
absolute  scepticism.  But  Kant  thought  otherwise. 
He  professed,  and  quite  sincerely,  to  be  no  sceptic. 
So,  as  in  duty  bound,  he  undertook  to  show  to  reason  a 
way  of  escape  and  deliverance,  or,  in  other  words,  to 
solve  its  dilemmas  and  dispel  its  antinomies.  And 
he  was  right  in  so  proceeding,  instead  of  accepting,  as 
Sir  William  Hamilton,  Mansel,  and  others  have  done, 
the  antinomies  as  expressions  of  a  fundamental  law 
of  thought,  and  making  no  attempt  to  solve  them, 
but  letting  faith  decide  for  the  term  which  pleases  it, 
although  there  is  as  much  reason  in  favour  of  the 
other.  Kant  was  neither  so  naive  nor  so  arbitrary  as 
that.  He  professed  not  only  to  demonstrate  but  to 
solve  the  antinomies,  and  to  solve  them  critically,  i.e., 
in  accordance  with  the  principles  of  his  own  theoreti- 
cal philosophy. 

What  is  his  so-called  critical  solution  ?  It  is  an 
application  of  his  distinction  between  phenomena  and 
things-in-themselves.  The  antinomies  of  reason,  he 
affirms,  necessarily  arise  from  our  inveterate  habit 
of  confounding  our  own  laws  of  thought  with  inde- 
pendent existence.  If  things-in-themselves  be  sub- 
jected to  the  dilemmas  raised  by  reason,  absolute 
scepticism  is  inevitable.  But,  according  to  Kant,  it 
is  just  in  thinking  so  that  our  error  lies.  What  is 
true  of  the  empirical  or  phenomenal  world  may  not 
apply  to  the  transcendental  or  intelligible  (noumenal) 
world.      A    totality    in    our   conceptions    is   not   to 

212 


ANTINOMIES  OF  KEASON 

be  identified  with  a  totality  of  things-in-themselves. 
The  objects  which  we  know  in  experience  are  not 
things-in-themselves,  but  exist  for  us  only  as  they  ap- 
pear to  us  in  experience.  Hence  we  have  no  right  to 
affirm  anything  of  them  in  themselves ;  no  right,  for 
example,  to  affirm  either  that  the  world  is  in  itself 
finitely  or  infinitely  extended,  for  the  world  in  itself 
is  not  a  world  that  we  know,  and  the  world  we  know 
is  one  which  exists  only  in  an  experience  that  is  al- 
ways extending  but  never  completed,  so  that  we  can 
neither  pronounce  the  extension  of  it  finite  nor  infi- 
nite. If,  however,  we  thus  distinguish  between  the 
worlds  of  existence  and  of  experience,  of  noumena  and 
of  phenomena,  and  recognise  that  what  is  true  of  the 
latter  need  not  be  true  of  the  former,  and  that,  indeed, 
thought  ceases  to  be  valid  beyond  experience  and  phe- 
nomena, we  may  fairly  hold  ourselves  entitled  to 
reject  both  the  theses  and  the  antitheses  of  the  first 
two  antinomies,  and  to  accept  the  theses  of  the  two 
last  as  true  of  the  noumenal  world  and  the  antitheses 
as  true  of  the  phenomenal  world. 

Such  is  Kant's  solution  of  the  antinomies  of  "  Ra- 
tional Psychology."  Now,  any  solution  is,  as  I  have 
said,  better  than  none.  And  Kant's  must  be  admit- 
ted to  be  ingenious,  and  also  to  have  actually  proved 
fruitfully  suggestive.  Regarded  from  a  logical  point 
of  view,  however,  it  is  thoroughly  futile.  There  is 
only  one  world  or  universe — the  phenomenal  world — 
the  universe  of  real  or  possible  experience.  All 
Kant's  antinomies  relate  only  to  it.  The  question 
whether  the  so-called  transcendental  or  intelligible 

213 


AGNOSTICISM   OF  HUME  AND   KANT 

world,  the  Kantian  "  world-in-itself,"  is  finitely  or 
infinitely  extended,  is  a  question  which  cannot  be  in- 
telligently put  or  sanely  answered  in  any  definite 
way.  N^othing,  not  even  existence,  can  be  attributed 
to  an  absolutely  unknown  and  unknowable  world, 
Kant,  seeing  that  he  lectured  and  wrote  regarding  it, 
should  have  had  some  real  thought  of  it  and  belief  in 
it;  but  it  is  quite  certain  he  had  none,  nor  has  any 
other  person  had,  notwithstanding  all  that  has  been 
talked  and  printed  concerning  it.  Inasmuch  as  all 
knowing  of  anything  is  the  knowing  of  it  not  out  of 
but  in  relation  to  a  knowing  self,  no  finite  or  even  in- 
finite intelligence  can  be  supposed  to  know  any 
"  thing-in-itself."  Indeed,  a  "  thing-in-itself "  is 
not  only  what  no  intelligence  can  know  but  what  no 
intelligence  can  be  ignorant  of,  for,  as  Ferrier  has 
well  ^hown,  "  we  can  be  ignorant  only  of  what  can 
possibly  be  known;  in  other  words,  there  can  be  an 
ignorance  only  of  that  of  which  there  can  be  a  knowl- 
edge." ^  A  "  thing  "  or  "  world  "  "  in-itself  "  is  as 
utterly  nonsensical  as  a  whole  which  is  smaller  than 
any  of  its  parts.  An  infinite  intelligence  seeing  the 
universe  through  and  through  could  no  more  have  a 
glimpse  of  the  Kantian  so-called  "  intelligible  world  " 
than  the  dullest  human  or  even  animal  intelligence. 
To  refer  us  in  any  way  to  such  a  world  as  a  key  to  the 
solution  of  the  antinomies  of  reason  is  certainly  not 
to  give  us  any  help. 

The  merit  of  Kant  as  regards  what  are  termed  an- 
tinomies of  reason  lay  not  in  resolving  them  but  in 

•  Institutes  of  Metaphysics^  404-408. 
314 


THE  ANTINOMIES   EXAMINED 

calling,  or  rather  recalling,  attention  to  them.  His 
whole  treatment  of  them  was  hazy  and  superficial. 
He  dogmatically  assigned  them  to  a  particular  source 
instead  of  critically  inquiring  what  their  source  was. 
He  did  not  discuss  the  important  questions  as  to 
whether  or  not,  or  to  what  extent,  they  are  natural 
and  necessary  perplexities  of  reason  itself  or  the  arti- 
ficial puzzles  of  a  misapplied  metaphysical  ingenuity. 
He  arbitrarily  assumed  them  to  be  confined  to  a  spe- 
cial faculty  and  a  particular  pseudo-science,  although 
they  are  also  to  be  found  in  logic,  mathematics,  dy- 
namics, ethics,  &c.  He  made  no  general  survey  of 
them  ;  nor  did  he  show  that  in  any  instance  both  terms 
of  an  antinomy  really  appear  to  have  equal  claims  to 
acceptance  where  a  synthesis  is  not  only  possible  but 
logically  demanded.  All  the  antinomies  specified  by 
Kant  are  pervaded  by  one  fundamental  antithesis  of 
which  only  one  term  is  reasonable  or  provable.  One 
or  other  or  both  of  his  "  demonstrations  "  will  be 
found  to  be  illogical.  How  he  could  have  fancied, 
for  example,  the  verbiage  attached  to  the  second  prop- 
osition of  his  first  antinomy  a  "  demonstration  "  is 
most  amazing.  Then,  the  first  proposition  of  his  sec- 
ond antinomy  is  a  truism,  while  the  second  is  a  para- 
dox, and  the  whole  antinomy  is  so  feebly  and  confus- 
edly dealt  with  that  it  is  difficult  to  make  out  what 
was  aimed  at.  There  is  no  real  contradiction  involved 
in  the  third  antinomy,  and  no  proof  whatever  is  given 
that  there  is  not  room  in  the  universe  for  both  free- 
dom and  necessity.  In  the  fourth  antinomy  the  anti- 
thetic proposition  is  absurd,  and  all  that  Kant  says  in 

215 


AG^^OSTICISM    OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

support  of  it  merely  tends  to  show  that  the  idea  of 
Necessary  Being  is  not  distinct  and  definite  like  a 
perception  of  sense  or  a  mathematical  figure,  whicli 
is,  of  course,  irrelevant  to  what  he  required  to  prove. 
In  short,  he  has  in  no  wise  made  out  that  reason  in 
theorising  on  the  universe  necessarily  falls  into  self- 
contradiction,  and  has  made  it  apparent  that  his  be- 
lief in  its  self-contradictoriness  arose  largely  from  the 
irrational  separation  of  phenomenal  and  noumenal 
by  which  he  pretended  to  solve  the  imaginary  contra- 
dictions which  he  ascribed  to  it.  His  attempt  to  do 
so  has  been  well  characterised  by  Wundt  (Log.  ii. 
376)  as  a  "  Scheingefecht." 

III.  Rational  Theology.  This  is,  according  to 
Kant,  the  pseudo-science  based  on  the  third  idea  of 
pure  reason,  the  highest  of  its  ideas,  and  therefore,  in 
order  to  distinguish  it  from  the  other  ideas,  often 
called  by  him  an  ideal.  It  is  the  idea  or  ideal  of  the 
totality  of  possibility,  of  reality,  and  of  perfection,  in- 
clusive of  individuality  and  personality,  or,  in  a  word, 
the  idea  or  ideal  of  God.  It  originates,  he  holds,  so  far 
as  it  can  be  traced  to  the  pure  or  speculative  reason, 
and,  indeed,  so  far  as  it  can  be  traced  to  intelligence 
at  all,  in  the  form  of  the  disjunctive  syllogism, — a 
form  which  implies  the  determinability  of  a  thing  to 
the  totality  of  all  possible  predicates.  To  know  any- 
thing completely  it  is  necessary  for  reason  to  have 
the  idea  of  the  whole  of  possible,  real,  and  perfect 
being,  and  to  determine  the  thing  thereby  negatively 
or  positively.  Further,  reason  cannot  content  itself 
with  entertaining  the  idea   as  a  merely  regulative 

216 


RATIONAL   THEOLOGY 

principle  of  thought,  but  must  go  on  to  objectify,  hy- 
postatise,  and  personify  it,  and  to  build  up  on  it  a 
system  of  dogmas,  although  it  is  a  mere  subjective 
conception  without  any  real  basis  or  content.  Hence 
belief  in  the  existence  of  an  Absolute  and  Perfect  Be- 
ing,— faith  in  God,  so  far  as  founded  on  reason,  is  a 
dialectical  illusion. 

Such  is  Kant's  view  of  the  rational  idea  or  ideal  of 
God.  It  is,  unquestionably,  an  ingenious  one.  I  am 
not  aware  that  any  person  before  him  had  the  thought 
of  tracing  the  belief  in  God  to  the  form  of  the  dis- 
junctive syllogism  as  its  source.  Only  a  very  subtle 
and  speculative  individual,  of  a  decidedly  scholastic 
turn  of  mind,  would  have  dreamed  of  so  curious  and 
abstruse  an  explanation  of  a  universal  belief  which 
probably  no  man  who  entertained  it  had  ever  before 
rested  on  the  ground  indicated.  The  view  was,  fur- 
ther, as  consistent  as  it  was  ingenious.  It  was  just 
the  view  which  Kant's  system,  and  especially  his  the- 
ory of  the  faculties  and  functions  of  cognition,  de- 
manded. If  his  plan  of  the  speculative  reason  were 
correct  the  origin  of  the  belief  in  God  could  not  be 
found  among  the  forms  of  sense  or  the  categories  of 
the  understanding,  but  only  in  the  operations  of  the 
ideas  of  reason;  not  in  the  region  of  perceptions  or 
of  judgments  but  only  of  syllogisms.  He  found  it 
where  he  was  logically  bound  to  find  it. 

Ingenuity  and  consistency,  however,  are  the  only 
merits  which  we  can  justly  attribute  to  his  hypothe- 
sis, and  even  they  seem  to  deserve  but  slight  admira- 
tion.    The  ingenuity  should  of  itself  suggest  suspi- 

217 


AGNOSTICISM    OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

cion.  A  belief  like  the  belief  in  God  cannot  have  had 
the  extremely  artificial  origin  which  Kant  assigns  to 
it.  Its  real  source  must  be  sought  for  in  the  reasons 
which  have  actually  given  rise  to  it  in  the  conscious 
experience  of  the  race  and  made  its  history  what  we 
know  it  to  have  been.  Among  such  reasons  the  one 
alleged  by  Kant  had  certainly  no  place.  Unless  un- 
duly influenced  by  scholastic  habits  of  thought,  he 
could  not  have  assigned  to  the  disjunctive  syllogism 
the  part  which  he  did  in  the  origination  of  the  idea  of 
God.  His  consistency  was  maintained  by  the  sacri- 
fice of  naturalness  and  truth. 

The  point  of  view,  then,  from  which  he  criticised 
"  Rational  Theology "  was  highly  dubious.  His 
conceptions,  I  must  add,  of  the  nature  of  what  are 
called  the  proofs  for  the  Divine  existence  were  very 
defective.  He  regarded  them  not  as  the  indications 
of  real  processes  of  knowing  by  which  religious  expe- 
rience is  attained  and  extended,  but  as  formal  syllo- 
gisms, each  of  which  must  determine  in  itself  whether 
or  not  a  conclusion  is  true  and  certain.  But  that 
is  an  erroneous  assumption,  a  scholastic  prejudice 
which  has  found  its  contradiction  in  the  whole  history 
of  modern  science.  Any  criticism  of  the  theistic 
proofs  founded  on  so  inaccurate  a  conception  of  their 
character  cannot  fail,  however  acute  and  subtle  it  may 
be,  to  be  in  the  main  inconclusive.  Were  the  proofs 
of  positive  and  inductive  science  exhibited  and  crit- 
icised in  the  same  abstract  and  artificial  manner  as 
were  the  proofs  of  Natural  or  Rational  Theology  by 
Kant,  they  would  fare  just  as  badly.     They  actually 

218 


THE   ONTOLOGICAL   ARGUMENT 

were  so  criticised  in  the  Middle  Ages,  and  the  result 
was  that  there  was  almost  no  positive  or  inductive  sci- 
ence in  those  ages.  The  world  and  man  were  most 
superficially  known  because  most  unwisely  studied. 
Were  geologists,  biologists,  or  psychologists  required 
to  set  forth  the  proofs  of  their  conclusions  in  formal 
syllogistic  processes  they  must  abandon  their  occupa- 
tions. Reason  reaches  a  knowledge  of  God  in  essen- 
tially the  same  way  as  it  requires  a  knowledge  of  the 
other  great  ultimate  realities.  No  object  is  known 
to  us  otherwise  than  through  acquaintance  with  its 
qualities  or  attributes,  its  powers  and  manifestations. 
The  dialectical  illusion  which,  according  to  Kant, 
originates  in  the  form  of  the  disjunctive  syllogism, 
he  represents  as  requiring  to  support  itself  by  three 
arguments — called  respectively  the  Ontological,  the 
Cosmological,  and  the  Physico-Theological — the  only 
three,  he  maintains,  that  can  be  employed  by  specu- 
lative reason  to  prove  the  existence  of  God.  To  the 
refutation  of  these  arguments  he  devotes  a  very  inter- 
esting and  important  portion  of  his  "  Transcendental 
Dialectic."  The  objections  urged  in  it  against  the 
theistic  proofs,  although  in  no  instance  original,  are 
well  selected  and  well  presented.  They  are  the  strong- 
est of  the  objections  that  have  been  urged  against  the 
three  proofs,  which  are  alone  subjected  to  scrutiny. 
iN^one  of  them  are  devoid  of  a  considerable  measure 
of  plausibility  or  relevancy.  They  are  stated  clearly, 
effectively,  and  in  an  order  which  had  at  least  the 
merit  of  being  the  one  most  suited  to  attain  the  end 
Kant  had  in  view.     And,  further,  they  are  essential 

219 


AGNOSTICISM   OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

portions  of  one  of  the  greatest  of  philosophical  sys- 
tems, and  occupy  in  it  a  distinct  and  highly  important 
position.  It  is,  therefore,  perhaps  not  surprising 
that  during  the  period  when  the  influence  of  Kant 
was  at  its  height  his  criticism  of  the  theistic  proofs 
should  have  been  widely  regarded  as  decisive.  That 
time  has  now  largely  passed  away,  and  those  who  still 
believe  so  may  not  uncharitably  be  regarded  as  belated 
thinkers  or  very  uncritical  criticists.  Yet  much  even 
of  contemporary  agnosticism,  both  of  a  popular  and 
of  a  so-called  scientific  kind,  rests  largely  on  an  un- 
tested assumption  of  the  validity  of  Kant's  criticism 
of  Rational  Theology;  and  hence  to  indicate  the 
grounds  on  which  the  assumption  may  be  questioned 
is  still  by  no  means  superfluous. 

1.  The  ontological  argument. — (a)  Kant  treats  as 
such  what  is  only  one  of  a  class  of  the  so-called  a 
priori  theistic  proofs.  Hence  his  refutation  of  it, 
even  if  successful,  would  not  be  a  disproof  of  a  priori, 
or  even  of  ontological  theistic  argumentation  in  gen- 
eral. It  has  no  reference  at  all  even  to  the  class  of 
a  priori  proofs  best  entitled  to  be  called  ontological, 
inasmuch  as  they  start  not  from  the  affirmation  of  an 
idea  but  from  the  affirmation  of  existence — the  affir- 
mation that  something  (anything)  is,  and  that  that 
of  itself  implies  that  nothing  never  was,  and  eternal 
and  necessary  being  has  ever  been.  It  is  to  be  regret- 
ted that  Kant  wholly  ignored  such  arguments,  as  re- 
flection on  them  might  have  at  least  led  him  so  far 
into  "  the  Parmenidean  way  of  truth  "  as  to  meditate 
on  the  significance  of  It  is,  until  he  recognised  the 

220 


THE  ONTOLOGICAL  ARGUMENT  EXAMINED 

defectiveness  of  his  conceptions  of  existential  judg- 
ments, and  the  rashness  of  asserting  that  is  "  is  al- 
ways merely  the  copula  of  a  judgment." 

(b)  The  so-called  ontological  argument  discussed 
— one  of  the  Cartesian  forms  of  a  priori  theistic  proof 
■ — is  taken  up  by  Kant  first  on  the  ground  that,  al- 
tliough  it  has  appeared  much  later  than  the  other 
two  arguments  to  be  examined,  it  is  presupposed  by 
them.  That  ground,  however,  is  a  false  assumption. 
The  argument  in  question  is  not  first  in  the  natural 
order  of  the  tlieistic  proofs.  Those  proofs  represent 
stages  of  a  process  of  which  the  last  is  the  apprehen- 
sion of  God  as  the  all-perfect  Being.  Hegel  saw  this, 
and  properly  placed  the  ontological  argument  last,  al- 
though he  erroneously  treated  the  other  arguments  as 
merely  untrue  forms  of  the  ontological,  which,  there- 
fore, had  to  establish  the  truth  of  the  entire  thought 
of  God.  The  argument  criticised  by  Kant  proceeds 
from  the  idea  of  an  all-perfect  Being.  But  to  arrive 
at  such  an  idea,  the  elements  of  it,  the  perfections  in- 
cluded in  it — power,  wisdom,  goodness,  righteousness 
— must  surely  have  been  cognised  or  believed  in  as 
attributes  of  the  Divine.  And  they  could  only  be 
cognised  or  believed  in  by  some  such  modes  of  appre- 
hension or  inference  as  are  designated  the  cosmologi- 
cal,  physico-theological,  or  moral  proofs.  To  the  ex- 
tent that  God  is  known  in  any  of  these  ways  He  is 
known  as  existing.  All  theistic  proofs  are  proofs  of 
God's  existence.  There  is  no  more  need  to  begin  in 
theology  with  an  ontological  proof,  merely  to  prove 
the  existence  of  God,  than  there  is  need  to  commence 

221 


AGNOSTICISM   OF   HUME  AND  KANT 

the  study  of  geology  or  botany  with  an  ontological 
proof  of  the  existence  of  stones  or  plants.  It  admira- 
bly suited  Kant's  purpose,  however,  to  begin  as  he 
did.  If  he  could  make  it  appear  at  the  outset  that 
ideas  of  their  very  nature  cannot  imply  existence,  he 
would  only  require  to  affirm  it  all  through  to  the  end 
of  his  argumentation  in  order  to  save  himself  much 
logical  labour.  Certain  it  is  that  his  whole  criticism 
is  an  attempt  to  cut  the  connection  between  thought 
and  existence  at  the  point  where  it  seems  to  be  thin- 
nest. 

(c)  I  do  not  admit  that  hc^succeeded  in  his  attempt. 
On  the  contrary,  his  criticism  of  the  ontological  argu- 
ment itself  seems  to  me  futile  in  consequence  of  his  • 
assumption  that  thought  and  existence  are  essentially 
separate,  so  that  even  necessary  thinking  of  a  being 
as  necessarily  existing  is  no  assurance  of  its  existence. 
The  assumption  was  a  natural  consequence  of  the  in- 
coherent idealism  and  arbitrary  dualism  which  are 
the  chief  defects  of  his  philosophy.  Solid  founda- 
tion for  it  there  is  none ;  no  ground  for  believing  that 
there  is  any  such  chasm  between  thought  and  exist- 
ence, reason  and  reality,  as  is  affirmed.  On  the  con- 
trary, there  can  be  no  genuine  thinking  which  is  not 
a  thinking  of  the  existent,  no  reasonableness  except  in 
so  far  as  reason  apprehends  reality.  Mere  conceiving 
is  not  properly  thinking;  mere  imagining  is  neither 
reason  nor  reasoning.  According  to  Kant's  own  ex- 
press teaching,  we  must  necessarily,  by  the  very  con- 
stitution of  our  reason,  not  only  think  of  God,  but 
think  of  Him  as  necessarily  self -existing,  as  otherwise 

222 


THE   COSMOLOGICAL  ARGUMENT 

we  do  not  think  of  Him  at  all.  And  yet  he  maintains 
that  the  existence  of  God  cannot  be  inferred  from  the 
necessary  thought  of  His  necessary  existence,  seeing 
that  "  existence  cannot  be  clawed  out  of  thought." 
Were  that  really  so,  all  affirmations  of  existence  would 
be  unwarranted.  If  the  transition  to  existence  from 
the  necessary  thought  of  necessary  existence  be  de- 
nied, much  more  must  transition  from  particular  per- 
ceptions to  contingent  existences  be  denied  to  us.  If 
self-contradiction  be  a  law  of  necessary  thinking,  all 
thinking  may  be  self-contradictory,  all  reasoning  ir- 
rational. The  argument  of  Descartes  may  be  valid 
or  the  reverse,  but  Kant's  criticism  of  it  is  a  suicidal 
sort  of  reasoning,  an  argument  for  absolute  scepti- 
cism. 

(d)  As  to  that  portion  of  Kant's  criticism  of  the 
ontological  argument  which  takes  for  granted  the  pos- 
sibility of  annulling  the  subject  even  of  necessary- 
thinking,  it,  too,  implies  that  necessary  thinking  may 
not  be  necessary  and  may  be  unveracious,  and  does  so 
dogmatically  and  without  evidence.  It  also,  there- 
fore, has  to  be  regarded  as  a  petitio  principii  in  fa- 
vour of  agnosticism. 

2.  The  cosmological  argument  is  naturally  the  first 
in  order  of  the  theistic  proofs.  The  Divine  has  every- 
where been  first  recognised  as  power.  Hence  the  ar- 
gument made  its  earliest  appearance  not  with  the  first 
man  who  formulated  it  but  with  the  first  man  who,  in 
the  presence  of  natural  phenomena,  saw  in  them 
manifestations  which  he  felt  constrained  to  refer  to 
a  supernatural  power  or  powers,  to  a  deity  or  deities. 

233 


AGNOSTICISM   OF   HUME  AND  KANT 

It  maj  be  as  old  as  human  reason  itself,  and  is  not  in 
the  least  likely  to  be  ever  separated  from  it.  It  has 
been,  however,  always  so  far  changing  in  form,  and 
will  doubtless  continue  so  to  change,  as  what  it  rests 
on  ig  man's  entire  knowledge  of  the  world  in  whatever 
ways  gained,  and  that  is  an  always  widening  and 
varying  knowledge. 

Kant  pronounces  the  argument  "  a  perfect  nest  of 
dialectical  assumptions  "  (ein  ganses  Nest  von  dialek- 
tischen  Anmaassungen)  ;  but  the  words  are  really  a 
good  description  not  of  the  argument  but  of  his  own 
criticism  of  it.  His  objections  proceed  almost  entire- 
ly from  erroneous  assumptions  as  to  causality,  neces- 
sity, and  experience.  I  must  be  content  with  a  very 
brief  statement  of  my  reasons  for  thinking  so. 

(a)  His  first,  and  perhaps  chief  objection  to  the 
argument  is  that  it  illegitimately  passes  by  means  of 
the  principle  of  causality  from  experience  to  a 
"  thing-in-itself."  •  Causality,  he  affirms,  cannot  take 
us  beyond  experience.  There  is  a  sense  in  which 
that  is  true,  most  true.  That  experience  extends  just 
as  far  as  causality  and  similar  principles  will  legiti- 
mately take  us  is  a  great  and  precious  truth.  But 
that  is  not  what  Kant  means.  He  means  by  expe- 
rience sensuous  experience,  and  would  have  us  to  be- 
lieve that  causality  only  gives  order  to  sensuous  im- 
pressions but  can  by  no  means  carry  us  beyond  them. 
Are  there  no  dialectical  assumptions  of  the  most 
erroneous  kind  in  such  a  view?  Why,  that  concep- 
tion of  experience  assumes  the  truth  of  sensism,  and 
were  it  correct,  Kant  had  no  shadow  of  right  to  rep- 

234 


KANrS  OBJECTIONS 

resent  causality  as  even  subjectively  necessary.  In 
that  case  the  agnosticism  of  sensism,  of  Hume,  must 
be  well-founded,  while  the  agnosticism  of  criticism, 
of  Kant,  can  have  no  true  basis. 

(b)  Kant  argues  as  if  the  cosmological  argument 
represented  thought  as  proceeding  along  a  series  of 
intermediate  causes  outside  of  the  universe,  each  of 
which  is  contingent,  to  what  it  at  last  through  sheer 
weariness  arbitrarily  pronounces  a  first  and  necessary 
cause.  But  he  thereby  caricatures  the  real  process. 
There  is  no  warrant  for  assuming  intermediate  causes 
at  all.  If  the  universe  of  physical  things  and  finite 
minds  show  no  traces  of  necessary  self -existent  being, 
and  must  therefore  have  a  necessary  self-existent 
cause  out  of  itself,  our  first  step  of  inference  beyond 
the  universe  will  be  also  the  last.  We  know  nothing, 
and  can  reasonably  believe  nothing,  about  interme- 
diate beings  between  the  universe  and  the  first  cause, 
the  self-existent  being,  and  hence  we  have  nothing  to 
do  with  them  except  to  show  that  we  have  nothing  to 
do  with  them,  and  that  is  done  wherever  the  argu- 
ment is  properly  stated.  Reference  to  the  unthinka- 
bleness  of  an  infinite  regress — the  incredibility  of  an 
infinite  series — of  finite  causes,  is  only  required  to 
show  that  the  insertion  of  imaginary  intermediate 
causes  would  be  irrelevant  and  ineffective.  It  is  not 
a  direct  or  constitutive  part  of  the  argument ;  not  em- 
ployed as  Kant's  criticism  must  lead  unwary  readers 
to  imagine. 

(c)  Another  objection  taken  by  Kant  to  the  cosmo- 
logical argument  is  that  it  treats  the  idea  of  necessity 

2^5 


AGNOSTICISM    OF   HUME  AKD   KANT 

as  a  transcendental  object  of  knowledge.  He  af- 
firms that  because  we  are  under  the  necessity  of  think- 
ing a  necessary  cause  for  the  world  we  conclude  that 
there  is  such  a  cause ;  and,  of  course,  he  tells  us  that 
we  have  no  right  so  to  convert  a  necessity  of  thought 
into  a  necessity  of  existence.  But  surely  that  does 
not  advance  the  cause  he  pleads.  It  is  merely  a  reit- 
eration of  his  want  of  faith  in  the  veracity  of  neces- 
sary thought — a  want  of  faith,  too,  inconsistent  with 
all  that  is  positive  in  his  own  doctrine.  To  ascribe 
truth  to  what  reason  must  necessarily  think  is  per- 
fectly legitimate.  To  deny  to  it  truth  implies  not 
only  the  critical  scepticism  which  Kant  advocates, 
but  the  absolute  scepticism  which  he  repudiates  and 
pretends  to  refute. 

(d)  A  further  charge  of  Kant  against  the  cosmo- 
logical  argument  is  that  it  is  only  the  ontological  ar- 
gument in  disguise.  It  was  not  unnatural  that  he 
should  think  so,  as  his  view  of  both  arguments  was  far 
from  clear  and  definite.  Yet  the  arguments  are  as 
distinct  as  two  arguments  each  representing  a  stage 
or  moment  in  the  same  process  can  well  be.  They  are 
connected  and  explanatory,  but  neither  is  the  other 
in  disguise.  Kant's  conception  of  the  second  as  only 
a  veiled  form  of  the  first  is  transparently  erroneous, 
and  cannot  be  acquiesced  in  by  any  one  who  recognises 
that  the  rational  transition  from  the  world  as  a  known 
effect  to  its  cause  is  the  cosmological  argument,  the 
effectuation  of  the  transition  its  distinctive  and  even 
sole  function,  so  that  when  that  function  is  accom- 
plished its  work  is  done,  and  those  who  wish  to  know 

226 


THE  PHYSICO-THEOLOGICAL  ARGUMENT 

whether  the  cause  of  the  world  is  more  than  a  First 
Cause,  a  self-active,  all-productive  Power,  must  con- 
template the  world  from  other  standpoints  than  a 
merely  cosmological,  an  exclusively  ajtiological  one. 
Indeed,  confused  as  Kant's  own  criticism  is,  it  dis- 
proves what  it  claims  to  prove,  inasmuch  as  it  repre- 
sents the  cosmological  argument  to  have  a  function 
distinct  from  the  ontological,  although  affirming,  in- 
deed, that  the  basis  of  the  ontological  argument  is  em- 
ployed in  the  support  of  the  cosmological  ar-gument. 
Even  on  his  own  showing  the  distinction  of  the  two 
arguments  is  as  evident  as  their  relationship,  and  the 
second  is  not  the  first  in  another  name  and  another 
garb. 

3.  The  physico-theological  argument.  In  this  ar- 
gument the  inference  is  from  the  evidences  of  order 
and  purpose  in  the  world  to  a  divine  intelligence. 
Kant  pronounces  on  it  a  fine  and  celebrated  eulogium. 
Kevertheless  he  declares  it  to  be  logically  unsatisfac- 
tory, and  urges  certain  objections  against  it,  which 
had,  however,  been  far  more  skilfully  and  effectively 
urged  by  Hume.  Presented  as  they  are  in  all  their 
nakedness  by  Kant,  they  ought  not  to  mislead  any  in- 
dependent and  wakeful  mind, 

(a)  The  first  is  that  the  idea  of  finality  or  design 
on  which  the  argument  proceeds  is  of  subjective  ori- 
gin, and  consequently,  like  that  of  cause,  invalid 
when  transferred  from  the  experiential  to  the  supra- 
sensible,  or,  in  other  words,  when  applied  to  a  tran- 
scendental object.  Here  again,  however,  there  is  ir- 
relevancy, due  to  confusion  in  Kant's  own  thinking. 

227 


AGNOSTICISM   OF   HUME  AND  KANT 

The  argument  does  not  imply  that  the  idea  of  finality, 
as  revealed  in  the  universe,  carries  the  mind  to  a 
Kantian  transcendental  object  or  Kantian  thing-in- 
itself.  None  of  the  constitutive  ideas  of  reason  do 
that.  The  act  of  spiritual  apprehension  dependent 
on  the  principle  of  finality  merely  raises  the  mind 
to  the  intelligence  which  has  displayed  itself  in  the 
order  and  adaptations  of  the  universe ;  merely  brings 
the  human  mind  into  contact  and  communion  with  the 
Divine  Mind,  so  as  to  enlarge  and  elevate  its  expe- 
rience, while  not  taking  it  beyond  experience  or  en- 
abling it  to  know  the  unknowable.  The  principle  of 
finality  always  carries  us,  indeed,  beyond  the  phe- 
nomena of  sense  to  intelligence.  Intelligence  in  our 
fellow-men  is  no  more  a  phenomenon  of  sense  than 
intelligence  in  God.  That  finality  is  of  subjective 
origin  in  any  way  which  implies  that  it  has  no  ob- 
jective application  is  an  untenable  hypothesis — one 
which  would  require  us  to  disbelieve  not  only  in  the 
existence  of  the  Divine  Mind,  but  of  all  minds. 

(6)  The  second  objection  of  Kant  to  the  physico- 
theological  argument,  as  he  calls  it,  but  which  is  now 
generally  and  more  appropriately  designated  the  te- 
leological  argument,  is  that  it  cannot  at  the  utmost 
prove  more  than  the  existence  of  a  world-builder  of 
power  and  wisdom  proportioned  to  the  amount  of  or- 
der and  adaptation  displayed  in  the  world;  that  it 
leads  not  to  the  idea  of  a  creator  who  originates  his 
materials,  and  has  absolute  power  over  them,  but 
merely  to  that  of  an  architect  whose  materials  are 
given  him  and  who  shapes  and  combines  them  as 

228 


THE  TELEOLOGICAL  ARGUMENT 

best  he  can.  Biit  before  making  that  objection,  he 
ought  manifestly  to  have  taken  into  due  account  that 
the  argument  of  which  he  was  treating,  the  teleologi- 
cal  argument,  presupposed  of  its  very  nature  the  cos- 
mological  or  aetiological  argument,  the  express  and 
sole  purpose  of  which  is  to  trace  all  the  power  and 
efficiency  in  the  universe  to  an  extra-mundane  or  pri- 
mal Will.  If  he  thought  it  did  not  accomplish  that 
purpose,  he  should  have  objected  to  it  on  that  account ; 
but  the  objection  is  quite  out  of  place  when  urged  in- 
stead against  the  teleological  argument,  the  express 
and  sole  aim  of  which  is  to  show  that  the  cause  or 
will  which  is  the  source  of  all  the  power  or  efficiency 
in  the  universe  is  also  the  intelligence  or  reason  which 
accounts  for  all  the  order  and  harmony  therein.  To 
object  to  the  latter  argument  on  the  assumption  that 
it  ought  not  to  be  supported  on  the  former,  that  the 
arguments  have  not  distinctive  yet  associated  func- 
tions, is  not  reasonable  criticism,  but  a  cavilling  crit- 
icism which  refuses  to  judge  the  parts  of  a  rational 
process  in  relation  to  one  another  and  to  the  whole. 

(c)  The  teleological  argument,  Kant  further  ob- 
jects, does  not  prove  the  Divine  Intelligence  to  be 
infinite.  That  must  be  so  far  granted,  but  it  is  not 
much  to  the  point.  The  questions  as  to  the  Divine 
infinity,  absoluteness,  personality,  &c.,  do  not  fall  to 
be  discussed  at  the  teleological  stage  of  the  theistic 
proof.  They  become  relevant  only  at  a  later  and 
higher  stage — only  when  philosophical  reason  has 
ascended  as  high  as  it  can  without  folly — only  when 
speculative  thought  comes  to  deal  with  the  idea  of 

229 


AGNOSTICISM   OF    HUME  AND  KANT 

God  as  an  organic  and  harmonious  whole.  The  teleo- 
logical  argument  suffices,  however,  to  prove  Divine 
omniscience  in  relation  to  the  universe,  or,  in  other 
words,  that  God  knows  all  that  is  to  be  known  in  the 
iiniverse  from  its  centre  to  its  farthest  bounds,  and  in 
its  history  through  all  the  ages  of  its  existence.  And, 
further,  as  it  is  of  the  very  nature  of  intelligence  to 
know  itself  as  well  as  its  objects,  a  most  natural  corol- 
lary from  the  argument  is  that  God  must  not  only 
fully  know  the  universe  He  has  made  but  also  Him- 
self, His  own  boundless  being  and  blessedness,  the 
whole  of  His  powers  and  perfections.  If,  then,  the 
teleological  argument  does  not  of  itself  prove  the  Di- 
vine intelligence  to  be  infinite,  it  certainly  gives  us 
no  warrant  for  supposing  it  limited.  Kant  should 
have  stated  that. 

The  three  theistic  arguments  criticised  by  Kant 
in  his  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  were  regarded  by  him 
as  the  only  arguments  which  can  be  urged  on  behalf 
of  "  Rational  Theology  "  or  made  use  of  by  "  theo- 
retical reason."  His  examination  of  them  led  him, 
as  we  have  seen,  to  merely  negative  results.  The  so- 
called  arguments  he  maintained  to  be  sophisms,  the 
reputed  science  an  illusion,  the  knowledge  of  God  un- 
attainable, and  a  speculative  use  of  reason  in  the 
sphere  of  religion  necessarily  illegitimate.  Yet  he 
did  not  infer  from  those  findings  that  he  must  deny 
the  Divine  existence  or  even  cease  to  believe  in  God. 
Kant  was  no  atheist.  He  was  a  believer  in  God  and 
a  truly  religious  man ;  and  in  that  respect  his  theolog- 
ical followers  have  remained  more  faithful  to  his  doc- 

230 


ARE   THERE   TWO   KINDS   OF   REASON? 

trine  and  are  more  akin  to  him  in  spirit  than  the  spe- 
cially so-called  philosophical  Neo-Kantists. 

To  vindicate  the  consistency  of  his  attitude  tow- 
ards religion  he  had  recourse  to  the  distinction  be- 
tween theoretical  and  practical  reason.  If  we  can- 
not speculatively  prove  the  existence  of  God,  neither 
can  Ave,  he  affirms,  prove  His  non-existence.  Theo- 
retical reason  is  no  more  entitled  to  decide  in  favour 
of  His  non-existence  than  of  His  existence.  Hence 
while  criticising  and  rejecting  the  theistic  proofs,  it 
leaves  it  possible  that  a  belief  in  God  may  reasonably 
originate  in  the  practical  reason.  For,  according  to 
Kant,  there  are  two  sorts  of  reason — the  theoretical 
and  the  practical.  The  former  alone  gives  us  knowl- 
edge, but  knowledge  only  of  the  phenomena  of  sense. 
There  is  no  suprasensible  knowledge.  There  is  room, 
however,  for  a  belief  in  God  as  a  suprasensible  reality 
— for  a  postulating  of  His  existence  as  such — capable 
of  satisfying  the  requirements  of  duty,  the  wants  of 
our  nature  and  life.  We  are  entitled  to  retain  faith, 
although  we  must  forego  knowledge,  since  knowledge 
is  only  of  things  ^ye  see.  In  short,  Kant  insists  that 
his  criticism  is  not  scepticism,  and  that  it  only  de- 
stroys a  pretendedly  scientific  certitude  in  order  to 
clear  the  ground  for  a  moral  certitude  such  as  is 
alone  attainable  within  the  suprasensuous  sphere. 
Thus  while  he  comes  to  the  conclusion  that  we  cannot 
possibly  know  God,  he  fully  admits  that  we  are  bound 
by  what  he  calls  practical  reason  to  believe  in  God. 

A  very  few  words  on  those  views  must  here  suffice. 

1.  Kant's  division  of  reason  into  theoretical  and 
331 


AGNOSTICISM   OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

practical  is  not  to  be  accepted  simply  on  liis  authority. 
It  requires  to  be  shown  that  there  are  two  hinds  of 
reason.  That  there  are  not  two  hinds  of  reason  is  a 
quite  tenable  thesis.  No  one  will  deny  indeed  that 
reason  may  be  theoretical  and  practical,  in  the  sense 
that  it  may  be  directed  to  the  acquisition  of  knowl- 
edge and  also  to  the  attainment  of  practical  results. 
But  two  applications  of  reason  are  not  two  kinds  of 
reason ;  they  are  only  reason  exercised  in  two  ways. 
Reason  may  also  be  said  to  have  distinct  functions — 
noetic,  ethic,  and  aesthetic — according  as  it  discrim- 
inates between  the  true  and  the  false,  the  right  and 
the  wrong,  or  the  beautiful  and  deformed.  It  does 
not  follow  that  there  are  three  reasons  or  three  distinct 
kinds  of  reason,  but  merely  that  there  is  one  and  the 
same  reason  conversant  with  three  distinct  classes  of 
relations.  Kant's  belief  in  two  reasons  is  inseparable 
from  his  belief  in  two  separate  sorts  of  objects — 
noumena  and  phenomena.  The  one  belief  depends 
on  the  other.  Both  beliefs  are  unwarranted,  and  have 
done  much  mischief  in  philosophy. 

2.  Kant,  when  treating  of  "  Rational  Theology," 
did  not  include  the  7noral  p'oof  among  theistic  argu- 
ments. That  was  only  natural  in  one  who  separated 
theoretical  and  practical  reason  in  the  way  which  he 
did.  But  whoever  examines  an  appropriate  presen- 
tation of  the  moral  proof  must  see  that  it  is  just  as 
theoretical  as  the  etiological  or  teleological  proofs.  It 
is  an  argument  from  the  manifestations  of  God  in 
moral  law  and  moral  order  just  as  they  are  arguments 
from  two  other  forms  of  His  self-manifestation  to 

232 


I 


KANT'S  VIEWS  EXAMINED 


His  power  and  wisdom.  In  works  published  subse- 
quently to  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  Kant  has  pre- 
sented a  moral  argument  of  his  own,  and,  indeed,  in 
two  forms,  a  simpler  and  a  more  elaborate/  But  in 
neither  form  is  it  a  favourable  specimen  of  its  class. 
Admittedly  it  does  not  lead  to  any  real  knowledge  of 
God.  Kant  affirmed,  indeed,  that  although  all  other 
arguments  for  the  existence  of  God  are  delusive,  there 
is  given  in  conscience  (the  practical  reason)  a  feeling 
of  responsibility  and  a  sense  of  freedom  which  com- 
pel us  to  believe  in  One  through  whom  virtue  and  fort- 
une, duty  and  inclination,  will  be  reconciled,  and  in 
whom  the  will  will  be  free  to  do  all  that  it  ought. 
At  the  same  time,  he  was  too  sagacious  not  to  see  that 
all  reasoning  to  that  effect  would  be  met  with  the  re- 
tort and  reproach  that  the  same  process  by  which  he 
pretended  to  have  abolished  the  other  arguments  was 
just  as  applicable  to  his  new  one ;  that  the  ideas  of 
freedom  and  responsibility,  when  appealed  to  in  or- 
der to  assure  us  of  reality,  might  be  as  delusive  as 
those  of  causation  and  design ;  that  if  the  latter  were 
mere  forms  of  human  thought  the  former  might,  with 
equal  reason,  be  held  to  be  so  likewise,  and  no  less  in- 
capable of  affording  a  warrant  for  belief  in  God  Him- 
self;  and  consequently  that  the  final  religious  result 
of  his  philosophy  was  not  that  there  is  a  God,  but 
merely  that  there  is  an  idea  of  God  which  the  human 
mind  cannot  get  rid  of  but  which  it  is  wholly  incapa- 
ble of  justifying  or  verifying.     How  did  he  meet  such 

'  See  the  Kritik  der   Urtheilskraft.,  §§   86-90,  and   Kritik  der 
Praktischen  Vernunft,  ii.  B,,  2  H.  v-viii. 

233 


AGNOSTICISM   OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

antagonistic  criticism?  He  did  not  meet  it  at  all. 
He  evaded  it.  His  reply  amounted  simply  to  reaf- 
firming that  we  are  under  the  necessity  of  associating 
the  idea  of  a  Supreme  Being  with  the  moral  law,  and 
then  qualifying  the  statement  by  the  admission  that 
we  can  know,  however,  nothing  about  that  Being,  and, 
indeed,  as  soon  as  we  try  to  know  anything  about 
Him,  make  a  speculative  instead  of  a  practical  use  of 
reason,  and  so  fall  back  into  the  realm  of  sophistry 
and  illusion  from  which  the  Critical  Philosophy  is 
meant  to  deliver  us.  In  other  words,  what  he  tells 
us  is  that  the  argument  is  good,  but  only  on  the  condi- 
tions that  it  is  not  to  be  subjected  to  rational  scrutiny 
and  that  no  attempt  is  to  be  made  to  determine  what 
its  conclusion  signifies.  On  those  conditions  might 
he  not  have  found  any  argument  good  ?  Are  such 
conditions  not  inconsistent  with  the  whole  spirit  and 
very  existence  of  any  philosophy  which  claims  to  be 
critical  ? 

3.  Kant  distinguished  speculative  and  practical 
reason  too  sharply,  and  separated  them  too  widely. 
They  are  represented  by  him  as  more  exclusive  and 
antithetic  than  they  really  are.  Had  he  not  done  so 
he  could  not  have  conceived  of  God  as  not  in  some 
measure  an  object  of  knowledge  but  merely  of  belief ; 
could  not  have  failed  to  see  that  if  God  be  inevitably 
thought  of  as  morally  necessary,  even  in  the  way 
which  he  himself  describes,  God  must  be  to  that  extent 
really  and  necessarily  known ;  not  known,  indeed,  in 
the  absoluteness,  depths,  and  mysteries  of  His  being, 
but  known  in  the  only  way  any  being  can  be  known 

23i 


''BACK  TO  KANT*' 

by  men  as  a  moral  being — viz.,  through  moral  expe- 
rience and  moral  intuition  or  inference.  To  have 
for  belief  in  God  as  a  moral  being  the  only  kind  of 
reason  appropriate  for  such  belief  is  not  to  have 
merely  belief  in  God  but  to  have  a  real  knowl- 
edge of  God,  a  knowledge  founded  on  reason  and 
valid  for  reason,  and  not  essentially  distinct  from 
so-called  theoretical  knowledge.  Kant,  in  a  word, 
by  crudely  contrasting  theoretical  and  practical 
reason,  has,  of  course,  not  succeeded  in  establishing 
any  precise  distinction  between  what  he  calls  knowl- 
edge and  belief ;  on  the  contrary,  he  has  shown  him- 
self quite  unable  to  maintain  any  of  the  distinctions 
which  he  has  incidentally  laid  down  between  them. 
The  fundamental  affirmations  of  the  practical  reason, 
even  as  exhibited  by  himself,  have  the  characteristics 
which  he  would  confine  to  theoretical  knowledge. 

During  the  last  forty  years  many  philosophical 
writers  have  been  raising  the  cry  of  "  Back  to  Kant," 
and  none  have  done  so  more  loudly  than  theological 
and  anti-theological  agnostics.  The  cry  was  far  from 
wholly  unreasonable  and  has  been  far  from  unpro- 
ductive of  good.  Kant  must  be  acknowledged  to  have 
been  to  recent  and  present  philosophy,  as  Aristotle 
was  to  ancient  and  medieval  and  Descartes  to  modem 
philosophy,  its  chief  fountainhead ;  and  numerous  as 
are  the  rivers  and  rivulets  into  which  it  has  parted, 
all  of  them  have  owed  much  of  what  they  are  to  what 
they  have  derived  from  him.  We  have  now,  and  are 
likely  to  have  for  long,  abundant  reason  to  "  go  back 

235 


AGNOSTICISM   OF   HUME  AND   KANT 

to  Kant,"  but  we  should  certainly  not  go  back  to  him 
in  a  servile  and  passive  but  in  a  free  and  critical  spir- 
it. In  philosophy  to  call  any  man  master  is  proof  pos- 
itive that  you  have  no  true  sense  of  what  philosophy 
is.  "  Back  to  Kant  " — yes,  but  only  back  to  him  as  to 
all  great  philosophical  teachers.  "  Back  to  Kant  " — 
yes,  but  to  criticise  as  well  as  simply  to  imbibe;  to 
determine  what  ought  to  be  rejected  and  combated 
as  well  as  to  ascertain  what  should  be  adopted  and 
utilised. 

In  dealing  with  Kant  in  the  preceding  pages  I 
have  gone  back  to  him  only  to  criticise.  To  have  done 
more  would  have  been  irrelevant  so  far  as  my  task  is 
concerned.  I  have  further  criticised  only  those  views 
of  his  on  which  recent  agnosticism  has  sought  to 
build ;  have  challenged  merely  those  positions  of  his 
theory  of  knowledge  which  are  sceptical  in  tendency 
and  have  actually  been  largely  made  use  of  for  the 
support  of  agnostic  ends.  I  have  passed  no  judgment 
on  other  principles  or  portions  of  his  philosophical 
teaching,  or  on  the  developments  to  which  they  have 
given  rise.  I  willingly  acknowledge  even  that  should 
my  criticism  of  Kantian  agnosticism  be  allowed  to  be 
relevant  and  substantially  sound,  agnosticism  may 
notwithstanding  be  rightly  held  to  have  been  enor- 
mously indebted  to  Kant.  Recent  agnosticism  cer- 
tainly owes  to  him  the  larger  part  of  what  has  given 
it  plausibility  and  attractiveness,  very  much  of  what 
is  best  in  its  spirit  and  strivings,  and,  in  a  word,  very 
much  of  all  that  constitutes  the  superiority  of  recent 
agnosticism  over  earlier  agnosticism. 

236 


KANT'S  EPISTEMOLOGY 

Limited,  however,  as  my  treatment  of  Kant 
has  been  in  scope,  it  may  suffice  to  show  that 
neither  agnostics  nor  anti-agnostics  can  rationally 
go  back  to  the  epistemology  of  Kant  as  a  foun- 
dation on  which  to  build  a  philosophy.  Anti-ag- 
nostics cannot,  seeing  that  the  Kantian  epistemol- 
ogy is  agnostic  to  the  core.  To  say,  as  M.  Auguste 
Sabatier  does,  that  "  to  make  Kantism  end  in  scepti- 
cism shows  a  lack  of  intelligence,"  is  to  ignore  the 
bases  of  the  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  and  to  betray  a 
strange  ignorance  of  the  epistemological  doctrine 
which  he  so  much  admires.  Intelligent  agnostics  can 
no  more  go  back  to  Kant's  theory  of  knowledge  than 
their  opponents,  and  that  for  the  simple  reason  that 
it  is  in  the  main  not  a  sure  foundation  but  one  of 
wood,  hay,  and  stubble.  They  must  substitute  for 
it  a  better  if  they  would  not  avow  utter  scepticism 
and  avoid  manifest  inconsistency.  They  must  not 
merely  "  go  back  "  to  Kant,  but  must  do  all  the  fun- 
damental portion  of  his  work  over  again. 

A  distinguished  German  Neo-Kantist  once  warned 
the  philosophical  world  that  Kant  should  only  be 
criticised  on  the  presumption  that  he  was  "  a  genius." 
Certainly  he  was  "  a  genius,"  and  a  very  great  ge- 
nius. But  "  a  genius  "  should  enjoy  no  immunity 
from .  criticism.  Indeed,  a  genius  is  a  man  who  is 
just  as  capable  of  going  farther  astray  from  the  truth 
than  other  men  as  he  is  of  making  greater  progress  in 
it.  Plato,  Aristotle,  Descartes,  Spinoza,  Schelling, 
and  Hegel  were  men  of  rare  philosophical  genius,  but 
their  genius  did  not  preserve  them  from  colossal  blun- 

237 


AGNOSTICISM   OF   HUME  AND  KANT 

ders  and  terrible  misadventures.  Kant  erred  as  they 
did,  erred  as  a  man  of  genius — erred,  as  Luther  rec- 
ommended Melanchthon  to  sin,  fortUer.  It  was  in  so 
erring  that  hd  affirmed,  and  tried  but  failed  to  prove 
those  dogmata  vs^hich  so  many  have  rashly  accepted  as 
the  justification  of  their  agnosticism.  Hence  many 
have  cried  "  Back  to  Kant "  who,  had  their  intellect- 
ual vision  been  clearer,  would  have  seen  that  they 
might  more  consistently  cry,  "  Back  from  Kant  to 
Hume  " — back  to  the  abyss  which  Hume  revealed, 
and  from  the  sight  of  which  Kant  recoiled,  and  then 
strove  (largely,  alas!  in  vain)  to  fill  up  and  bridge 
over. 


238 


CHAPTER  V 
COMPLETE   OR  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

I.  AGNOSTICISM   NOT  EXACTLY  DIVISIBLE.       ITS 
GENERAL   DIVISIONS 

Agnosticism  has  already  appeared  in  many  forms, 
and  may  yet  appear  in  many  more.  Being  essen- 
tially indefinite,  it  is  easily  and  manifoldly  variable. 
Any  agnostic  thinker  of  ability  may  give  to  his  agnos- 
ticism an  original  and  individual  character,  although 
it  seems  to  surpass  the  ingenuity  of  man  to  devise  a 
type  of  agnosticism  at  once  consistently  agnostic  and 
clearly  distinctive.  Agnosticism  is,  in  fact,  never 
self-consistent,  and  never  exactly  this  or  that,  but 
always  relatively  a  more  or  less;  and,  consequently, 
any  mode  of  division  of  its  forms  which  pretends  to 
absolute  logical  correctness  shows,  on  the  part  of  its 
proposer,  want  of  insight  into  the  essentially  Protean 
nature  of  his  subject.  Agnosticism,  in  a  word,  is  not 
more  exactly  divisible  or  distributable  than  it  is.  ex- 
actly definable.  Hence  to  attempt  any  elaborate  clas- 
sification of  its  species  and  varieties  would  necessa- 
rily involve  a  waste  of  labour.  Such  a  classification 
might  possibly  be  made  plausible,  but  would  certainly 
be  untrue. 

The  most  current  general  divisions  of  agnosticism 
are  into  total  and  partial  agnosticism,  and  into  abso- 
lute and  modified  agnosticism.     And,  so  far  as  I  am 

239 


COMPLETE  OR  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

aware,  there  are  no  others  which  are  of  any  value. 
But  although  the  best,  the  most  fundamental,  and  the 
most  instructive  of  such  divisions, — and  although 
no  one  can  relevantly  either  argue  for  or  against  ag- 
•nosticism  without  having  regard  to  them, — they  are 
rather  ideal  than  real,  and,  one  may  almost  say,  are 
so  general  as  to  apply  exactly  to  no  particulars. 

There  never  was,  is  not,  and  never  will  be,  a  total 
or  absolute  agnosticism.  Man  lacks  the  skill  to  con- 
struct and  the  courage  to  maintain  a  system  which 
entirely  and  expressly  disowns  and  disavows  the  ra- 
tionality distinctive  of  his  nature.  What  we  may 
agree  to  call  total  or  absolute  agnosticism  is  never 
strictly  either  total  or  absolute,  but  always  so  far  lim- 
ited and  qualified.  While  impartially,  perhaps, 
spreading  doubt  over  all  things  and  extending  its  dis- 
avowals of  knowledge  to  all  the  alleged  spheres  of 
knowledge,  it  is  under  the  necessity  of  drawing  lines 
and  of  making  assumptions  of  some  kind,  which  in 
some  measure,  and,  it  may  be,  to  no  small  extent,  re- 
strict its  profession  of  ignorance,  and  implicitly  re- 
tract its  doubts  and  disavowals.  The  pressure  of 
physical  phenomena,  of  states  of  consciousness,  and 
of  the  necessities  of  practical  life,  is  of  so  direct,  im- 
perative, and  powerful  a  kind  as  inevitably  to  pre- 
vent a  complete  development  of  the  agnostic  ideal 
even  in  the  most  sceptically  disposed  individual. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  is  no  merely  partial  or 
modified  agnosticism, — no  agnosticism  which  is  not 
inconsistent  as  partial  and  done  violence  to  by  modi- 
fication,— which  does  not  logically  carr}'  with  it  a 

240 


NO   PARTIAL  AGNOSTICISM 

demand  to  be  completed  and  rendered  thorough.  The 
agnosticism  which  is  explicitly  partial  and  modified 
is,  always  and  of  necessity,  implicitly  total  and  abso- 
lute. For,  while  the  objections  which  apply  to  ag- 
nosticism in  general  apply  also,  of  course,  to  its  spe- 
cial forms, — while  any  inconsistency  involved  in  the 
very  nature  of  agnosticism  must  be  found  in  all  its 
particular  phases, — partial  agnosticism  always  adds 
inconsistency  of  its  own  to  that  which  is  implied  in 
the  mere  maintenance  of  agnosticism  as  such — an  in- 
consistency inseparable  from  its  specialisation.  Ag- 
nosticism has  no  right  to  limit  itself ;  its  "  thus  far, 
but  no  farther,"  is  always  an  arbitrary  one.  The 
same  kind  of  argumentation  which  is  held  to  destroy 
the  credit  of  one  power  of  mind  or  department  of 
knowledge  would,  were  it  valid  at  all,  be  equally  de- 
cisive if  directed  against  other  powers  of  mind  and 
departments  of  knowledge.  We  cannot  set  aside  any 
one  real  law  of  thought,  except  on  grounds  which,  if 
sufficient,  would  warrant  us  to  set  them  all  aside. 
Our  rational  life  is  a  unity  to  which  all  its  laws  and 
powers  are  essential.  From  the  rejection  of  the  least 
of  the  laws  of  mind  the  rejection  of  all  will  logically 
follow.  From  the  suspension  or  extension  of  the 
humblest  of  its  powers  the  entire  cessation  of  its  in- 
tellectual activity  must  be  a  necessary  consequence. 

The  divisions  of  agnosticism  into  total  and  partial, 
absolute  and  modified,  may  coincide,  but  are  not 
identical.  The  one  is  a  quantitative  and  the  other  a 
qualitative  division.  The  one  rests  on  difference  of 
extension   and   the   other   on   difference   of   nature. 

241 


COMPLETE   OR  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

They  are  two  forms  of  the  complete  and  incomplete, 
but  distinct  forms.  Much  which  is  true  of  the  one 
may  he  true  of  the  other,  and  scrupulously  to  distin- 
guish them  on  all  occasions  may  often  be  pedantic, 
and  even  impossible.  But  it  is  necessary  to  know 
how  and  when  to  distinguish  them. 

Far  from  being  always  coincident,  they  may  at 
times  be  contraries.  Total  agnosticism  may  be  modi- 
fied, and  partial  agnosticism  may  be  absolute.  The 
doubt  or  disbelief  which  is  unlimited  as  to  extent  may 
be  qualified  in  its  nature ;  the  doubt  or  disbelief  which 
has  a  limited  sphere  assigned  to  it  may  have  that 
sphere  given  wholly  over  to  it. 

It  is  likewise  to  be  noted,  however,  that  modifica- 
tion and  limitation  imply  each  other  and  are  insepa- 
rable. Universal  doubt  or  disbelief  may  be  modified, 
and  yet  as  modified  extended  to  all  things ;  but  so  far 
as  modified  it  is  limited  throughout,  although  not 
limited  to  a  particular  sphere.  The  doubt  or  disbe- 
lief, on  the  other  hand,  which  is  limited  to  a  particu- 
lar sphere  must  be  so  limited  because  it  differs  in  nat- 
ure as  in  legitimacy  from  doubt  or  disbelief  within 
the  spheres  in  which  certainty  and  knowledge  are  at- 
tainable. In  like  manner  the  absolute  doubt  or  dis- 
belief which  is  not  total  cannot  be  strictly  absolute, 
and  the  total  doubt  which  is  not  absolute  cannot  be 
strictly  total.  Totality  as  to  extension  and  absolute- 
ness as  to  nature  are  alike  requisite  to  completeness. 
The  partial  and  the  modified  are  alike  forms  of  in- 
completeness. 

Agnosticism,  then,  is  divisible  into  complete  and 
242 


COMPLETE  AND  INCOMPLETE  AGNOSTICISM 

incomplete  as  regards  either  nature  or  extension.  The 
former  refuses  to  admit  that  there  is  any  certainty  of 
knowledge,  and  questions  the  veracity  of  every  prin- 
ciple and  power  of  cognition.  The  latter  refuses, 
with  more  or  less  of  qualification,  to  admit  certainty 
of  knowledge,  and  questions  the  reality  or  veracity  of 
some  particular  principle  or  principles,  power  or  pow- 
ers, of  cognition. 

The  latter  is,  of  course,  much  the  more  common. 
And  it  has  a  great  variety  of  forms,  seeing  that  dis- 
trust of  any  law  of  thought  or  faculty  of  mind  leads 
to  a  partial  agnosticism,  even  although  due  confidence 
be  reposed  in  all  the  other  laws  and  faculties  of  the 
mind.  Thus  there  is  an  agnosticism  which  rejects 
the  testimony  of  the  senses  while  admitting  that  of 
reason,  and  an  agnosticism  which  rejects  the  testi- 
mony of  reason  while  admitting  that  of  the  senses. 
Then  there  is  an  agnosticism  which  holds  religious 
truth  to  be  unattainable  but  passes  unchallenged  the 
findings  of  philosophy  and  science,  and  an  agnosticism 
which  combines  philosophical  doubt  with  theological 
dogmatism.  And  so  on.  For  the  ends  which  the 
present  writer  has  in  view  the  most  suitable  classifi- 
cation of  the  incomplete  or  partial  forms  of  agnosti- 
cism will  be  into  non-religious,  anti-religious,  and  re- 
ligious. It  is  chiefly  with  anti-religious  and  religious 
agnosticism  that  he  is  in  this  work  concerned.  On 
non-religious  partial  agnosticism  it  will  be  unneces- 
sary for  him  to  say  more  than  suffices  to  indicate  its 
bearings  on  the  agnosticism  which  deals  adversely  or 
favourably  with  religion. 

243 


COMPLETE   OR  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 


II.  WHY  COMPLETE  AGNOSTICISM  REQUIRES  TO  BE  DIS- 
CUSSED.      CRITICISM  OF  THE  VIEWS  OF  PAULSEN 

Complete  agnosticism  must  be  first  considered. 
Until  it  be  disposed  of  we  cannot  reasonably  proceed 
to  judge  of  any  other  kind  of  agnosticism.  The  gen- 
eral includes  the  particular.  If  there  be  no  certainty 
or  knowledge  there  can  be  no  religious  certainty  or 
knowledge.  If  the  conclusion  to  which  total  or  ab- 
solute agnosticism  comes  can  be  successfully  main- 
tained, all  views  to  the  contrary  which  men  entertain 
regarding  God,  spiritual  things,  and  theology  must 
obviously  be  surrendered,  equally  with  those  which 
relate  to  nature  and  man,  ordinary  knowledge,  physi- 
cal science,  and  philosophy.  We  clearly  cannot  afford 
to  grant  that  it  is  a  warrantable  conclusion,  and  hence 
must  criticise  the  claims  of  the  theory  which  has  com- 
mitted itself  to  its  support. 

And  yet  it  is  very  probable  that  to  most  persons  at 
first  sight  absolute  agnosticism,  universal  scepticism, 
will  appear  too  extravagant  and  incredible  a  scheme 
of  thought  to  call  for  any  discussion.  They  may 
doubt  whether  it  has  ever  been  seriously  entertained 
or  propounded,  and  think  that  to  make  any  attempt 
to  refute  it,  or  to  take  any  special  notice  of  it,  is  to  do 
it  too  much  honour  and  to  assign  it  too  much  impor- 
tance. iN'or  is  this  view  confined  to  those  who  are 
not  conversant  with  philosophy  and  its  history :  it  has 
been  maintained  by  philosophical  writers  of  good  re- 
pute.    Therefore  it  must  not  be  quite  ignored, 

244 


PAULSEN  ON  THE  THEORY  OF  KNOWLEDGE 

Professor  Paulsen  of  Berlin  may  be  selected  as  the 
spokesman  of  those  who  hold  it.  Treating  of  the 
theory  of  knowledge,  or  what  is  commonly  called  epis- 
temology,  he  affirms  that  its  fundamental  problem 
must  be  answered  in  one  or  other  of  four  distinct 
ways.     These  are : — 

(1)  We  know  things  as  they  are  in  themselves 

through  perception.  This  is  the  answer  of 
Realistic  Empiricism,  the  view  which  comes 
nearest  to  the  naive  of  common  conception. 

(2)  We  know  things  as  they  are  but  only  through 

reason,  not  through  the  senses.  This  is  the 
answer  of  Realistic  Rationalism,  the  one  re- 
turned by  Plato,  Spinoza,  Hegel,  and  other 
great  metaphysical  system-builders. 

(3)  We  know  about  things  only  through  percep- 

tion, yet  certainly  attain  thereby  no  ade- 
quate knowledge.  This  is  the  answer  of 
Idealistic  Empiricism,  and  Hume  may  be 
regarded  as  its  most  resolutely  logical  advo- 
cate. 

(4)  We  know  reality  a  priori  through  pure  rea- 

son, yet  certainly  not  as  it  is  in  itself,  but 
only  as  it  appears  to  us,  and  indeed  only 
according  to  the  forms  of  our   intuition. 
This  is  the  answer  of  Idealistic  Rational- 
ism, the  view  of  Kant. 
Dr.  Paulsen  then  proceeds  to  say :     "  The  historians 
of  philosophy  are  wont  to  bring  before  us  yet  another 
form  of  theory  of  knowledge,  scepticism,  which  af- 
firms that  we  can  have  no  knowledge.     Here  and 

245 


COMPLETE  OR  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

there  some  one  even  takes  the  trouble  to  contradict 
this  view.  It  seems  to  me  to  be  superfluous  trouble. 
If  there  were  ever  real  scepticism  it  has  died  out  in 
modern  times.  'No  modern  philosopher  has  doubted 
that  there  is  real  knowledge,  distinguishable  from 
nescience.  It  is  customary  to  refer  to  Hume  as  the 
representative  of  scepticism.  And,  sure  enough, 
Hume  plays  with  the  designation.  For  this  he  has 
been  sufficiently  punished  by  the  consequent  miscon- 
ceptions of  his  meaning.  But  it  never  occurred  to 
him  to  maintain  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  science. 
He  merely  maintained,  on  the  one  hand,  that  natural 
theology  with  its  proofs  of  the  existence  of  God  and 
of  the  immortality  of  the  soul  is  not  science ;  and,  on 
the  other  hand,  that  any  knowledge  attainable  regard- 
ing facts  must  be  acquired  through  experience,  and 
is  not  of  universal  and  necessary  validity.  It  was 
Kant  who  stamped  Hume  as  a  sceptic,  whom  he  had 
to  oppose  in  order  to  save  the  sciences  and  show  the 
possibility  of  metaphysics,  physics,  and  even  mathe- 
matics. As  regards  pure  mathematics  Kant's  judg- 
ment on  Hume's  scepticism  rests  on  pure  misunder- 
standing ;  as  regards  metaphysics  he  himself,  not  less 
than  Hume,  rejects  rational  theology,  cosmology,  and 
psychology.  There  remains  physics:  here  both  ad- 
mit that  there  is  such  a  science;  they  differ  only  in 
their  views  of  the  form  and  nature  of  the  certainty 
of  its  propositions.  Kant  thinks  that  some  among 
them  are  absolutely  universal  and  necessary  (a  'priori 
synthetic  judgiuents),  while  Hume  regards  even  its 
axioms  as  only  presumptively  general  propositions 

246 


PAULSEN  ON  PHILOSOPHICAL  SCEPTICISM 

dependent  on  experience, — a  difference  of  opinion 
which  cannot  be  fitly  expressed  by  saying  that  Hume 
denies  the  possibility  of  physics. 

"  So  far  as  I  see,  it  is  the  same  with  other  sceptics. 
They  do  not  deny  the  possibility  or  the  existence  of 
the  sciences,  but  only  emphasise  the  limitedness  and 
uncertainty  of  human  science  compared  with  an  ideal 
of  knowledge  such  as  may  possibly  be  realised  in  a 
divine  mind.  The  only  scepticism  to  be  found  in 
modern  philosophy  is  one  which  opposes  the  preten- 
sions of  transcendental  speculation ;  it  shows  a  two- 
fold aspect,  inasmuch  as  it  defends  either  religious 
faith  or  empirical  research  against  the  usurpations  of 
speculation."  ^ 

Now,  such  statements  as  these  are  so  apt  to  mislead 
that  they  cannot  prudently  be  passed  over  in  silence. 
They  are,  for  the  most  part,  very  inaccurate. 

The  historians  of  philosophy  are  quite  justified  in 
bringing  philosophical  scepticism  before  us  in  the 
way  which  they  generally  do.  They  could  neither 
reasonably  ignore  so  remarkable  a  phase  of  philoso- 
phy, nor  could  they  give  any  substantially  different 
account  of  it  than  that  which  they  present.  They 
could  only  adopt  Dr.  Paulsen's  view  of  it  by  disre- 
garding or  misinterpreting  the  sources  of  information 
relative  to  it.  However,  it  is  inaccurate  to  say  that 
they  represent  scepticism  as  "  a  kind  of  theory  of 
knowledge  which  maintains  that  we  can  have  no 
knowledge."  This  they  are  not  "  wont  to  do."  On 
the  contrary,  all  historians  of  philosophy  of  good  re- 
•  EifUeitung  in  die  Philosophies  352-353. 

247 


COMPLETE   OR  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

pute  represent  scepticism  as  a  kind  of  theory  of 
knowledge  the  holders  of  which,  if  not  invariably  at 
least  as  a  rule,  content  themselves  with  maintaining 
that  those  who  profess  to  have  knowledge, — those 
whom  they  regard  as  dogmatists, — have  not,  in  their 
judgment,  succeeded  in  showing  that  they  have  ra- 
tional grounds  for  their  profession,  or  for  the  belief 
which  it  implies. 

Dr.  Paulsen  pronounces  it  "superfluous  trouble  " 
to  contradict  the  sceptical  theory  of  knowledge.  But 
were  no  one  to  contravert  it,  and  to  show  grounds  for 
rejecting  it,  would  the  need  for  any  other  theory  of 
knowledge  be  made  out  ?  Would  not,  in  that  case,  all 
search  for  another  theory  of  knowledge  be  justly  cen- 
surable as  "  supei'fluous  trouble  "  ? 

The  actual  historical  existence  of  philosophical 
scepticism,  both  in  ancient  and  in  modern  times,  is 
about  as  certain  as  anything  historical  can  be.  There 
can  only  be  reasonable  difference  of  opinion  as  to 
whether  or  not  there  has  appeared  an  absolutely  com- 
plete, fully  and  self-consistently,  evolved  scepticism 
in  the  course  of  the  history  of  philosophy.  We  are 
ready  to  grant  that  there  has  not ;  that  such  scepti- 
cism is  not  only  a  rare  phenomenon  in  history,  but 
an  unknown  and  indeed  an  impossible  and  inconceiv- 
able one.  Are  not,  however,  all  the  specifically  dis- 
tinct theories  of  knowledge  in  this  respect  on  the 
same  level?  Are  not  realism  and  idealism,  empiri- 
cism and  rationalism,  equally  with  scepticism,  theo- 
ries of  knowledge  which  have  only  attained  in  history 
an  incomplete  and  inconsistent  manifestation  ?     Has 

248 


PHILOSOPHICAL  SCEPTICISM 

there,  for  instance,  been  any  one  who,  fully  realising 
what  he  meant,  affirmed  that  he  knew  things  as  they 
are  in  themselves  through,  and  only  through,  percep- 
tion? Has  there  ever  been  a  man  so  naif  or  such  a 
philosophical  simpleton  as  to  be  a  mere  and  complete 
realistic  empiricist  ?  Scepticism — i.e.,  universal 
scepticism  or  absolute  agnosticism — stands  on  the 
same  footing  as  other  theories  of  knowledge  in  being 
rather  an  ideal  than  a  reality ;  and  in  its  contradic- 
tion being  rather  an  argument  against  a  general  spec- 
ulative tendency  than  against  the  doctrine  of  any  par- 
ticular person,  even  the  most  sceptical. 

On  the  other  hand,  philosophical  scepticism  has 
often  advanced  very  far  towards  completeness, — so 
far  that  the  discussion  of  it  as  complete  is  legitimate 
and  necessary.  In  the  course  of  the  history  of  specu- 
lation many  thinkers  have  appeared  whose  views  as 
to  knowledge  left  hardly  any  room  for  belief  in  its 
reality.  In  antiquity,  Pyrrho  and  his  followers — ^the 
founders  and  disciples  of  the  Middle  Academy — and 
the  members  of  the  later  sceptical  schools,  such  as 
^^nesidemus,  Agrippa,  and  Sextus  Empiricus, — all 
refused  to  admit  that  any  proposition  as  to  the  reality 
of  things  or  as  to  real  truth  could  be  known  or 
proved  with  certainty,  and  held  that,  as  to  the  truth 
or  falsity  of  such  propositions,  suspension  of  judg- 
ment was  the  appropriate  state  of  mind.  Those  who 
went  thus  far  were  surely  very  nearly  complete  scep- 
tics, although  they  could  not  avoid  making  some  con- 
cessions inconsistent  therewith,  but  without  which 
they  could  never  have  justified  their  reasoning  or  act- 

249 


COMPLETE  OK  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

ing  on  any  subject  or  occasion  whatever.  Then,  the 
theological  agnostics  who,  from  the  Renascence  to  the 
present  day,  have  laboured  to  discredit  natural  reason 
in  order  to  induce  men  to  put  their  trust  in  supernat- 
ural grace  or  the  guidance  of  external  authority,  are 
to  be  accounted,  to  all  intents  and  purposes,  sceptics 
as  to  knowledge  and  science  in  general. 

Now,  what  of  Hume  ?  "  It  never  occurred  to  him," 
says  Dr.  Paulsen,  "  to  maintain  that  there  is  no  such 
thing  as  science."  'No,  and  that  is  not  what  has  been 
attributed  to  him.  He  neither  denied  that  there  was 
any  such  thing  as  science,  nor  professed  to  disbelieve 
what  either  science  or  sense  taught.  What  he  did 
was  to  Imdertake  and  carry  out  ingenious  investiga- 
tions which  served  inevitably  to  lead  to  the  conclusion 
that  those  who  believed  the  teaching  of  either  sense 
or  science,  experience  or  reason,  had  no  logically  valid 
grounds  for  doing  so.  His  scepticism,  in  other  words, 
did  not  appear  in  a  direct  denial  of  the  existence  of 
knowledge,  but  in  an  elaborate  redviction  of  sub- 
stances to  collections  of  ideas,  of  time  and  space  to 
subjective  conceptions,  of  the  causal  connection  to 
habitual  association,  of  reason  to  custom,  and  the  like. 
And  a  very  thorough  scepticism  it  was.  If  the  con- 
clusions to  which  it  led  were  well-founded,  no  kind 
of  knowledge  was  well-founded;  if  it  proved  any- 
thing, it  proved  that  perception,  experience,  and  rea- 
soning proved  nothing.  It  was  concentrated  in  the 
metempirical  criticism  which  he  applied  to  the  bases 
of  all  knowledge.  That  criticism  was  subversive  of 
all  science  and  pholosophy;  as  subversive  of  mathe- 

250 


HUME'S   SCEPTICISM 

matics  and  physics  as  of  theology  and  metaphysics. 
Hume  would  have  been  not  less  of  a  sceptic  if  he  had 
never  written  a  sentence  about  natural  theology.  It 
is  as  erroneous  to  say  that  he  was  an  unbeliever  in 
the  existence  of  God  or  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul 
as  that  he  was  an  unbeliever  in  the  law  of  gravitation ; 
and,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  as  erroneous  to  represent 
him  as  recognising  that  the  law  of  gravitation  can  be 
any  more  rationally  proved  or  known  than  the  exist- 
ence of  God  or  the  immortality  of  the  soul.  Says 
Mr.  Balfour  not  less  justly  than  forcibly :  "  ISTothing 
in  the  history  of  speculation  is  more  astonishing; 
nothing — if  I  am  to  speak  my  whole  mind — is  more 
absurd  than  the  way  in  which  Hume's  philosophic 
progeny — a  most  distinguished  race — have,  in  spite 
of  all  their  differences,  yet  been  able  to  agree,  both 
that  experience  is  essentially  as  Hume  described  it, 
and  that  from  such  an  experience  can  be  rationally 
extracted  anything  even  in  the  remotest  degree  re- 
sembling the  existing  system  of  the  natural  sci- 
ences." ^ 

That  Hume  is  brought  before  us  by  the  historians 
of  philosophy  as  a  sceptic  is  certainly  not  owing  to 
Kant  having  "  stamped  "  him  as  such.  He  presented 
himself  to  the  world  as  a  sceptic,  the  author  of  a 
philosophy  akin  to  the  Greek  sceptical  philosophy. 
He  pleaded  "  the  privileges  of  a  sceptic  "  for  just  the 
kind  of  reasonings  on  account  of  which  alone  fair  ex- 
positors of  his  views  designate  him  a  sceptic.  He 
wrote  and  spoke  familiarly  of  "  his  scepticism  "  as 
>  The  Foundations  of  Belief,  p.  103  (8th  ed.) 
251 


COMPLETE   OK  ABSOLUTE   AGNOSTICISM 

"  his  philosophy  " ;  took  no  objection  to  his  most  dis- 
tinctive speculations  being  characterised  and  criti- 
cised as  "  sceptical " ;  and  was  universally  recog- 
nised, both  in  Britain  and  on  the  Continent,  as  a 
sceptic,  yea,  the  coryphceus  scepticorum  of  modern 
times,  as  soon  as  his  philosophical  writings  became 
known.  Kant  was  not  at  fault  in  attributing  to 
Hume  a  scepticism  as  sweepingly  destructive  as  that 
of  a  Cameades  or  ^'Enesidemus :  his  mistake  lay  in 
supposing  that  his  own  Critical  Philosophy  was  an 
antidote  to  it. 

We  have  so  recently  had  Mr.  Arthur  Balfour,  Dr. 
Gordy,  the  Abbe  Martin,  and  others  arguing  in  the 
most  explicit  manner  that  the  foundations  on  which 
physical  science  rests  are  not  rational  grounds  of 
conviction,  but  non-rational  impressions,  impulses,  or 
inclinations,  that  it  is  impossible  for  us  to  admit  that 
even  the  latest  scepticism,  the  scepticism  of  to-day, 
merely  emphasises  the  limitations  and  uncertainties 
of  human  science  or  restricts  itself  to  opposing  the 
pretensions  of  transcendental  speculation.  It  does 
that,  but  it  also  unquestionably  does  more.  It  like- 
wise challenges  all  so-called  positive  science  to  show 
that  its  principles  are  not  merely  assumptions  which 
have  no  other  guarantee  than  the  fact  that  they  are 
believed,  and  that  the  processes  through  which  its 
results  are  obtained  are  not  logically  illicit  and  in- 
conclusive inferences.  What  it  avowedly  and  ex- 
pressly seeks  to  show  is  that  the  foundations  of  the 
creed  of  science  are  just  of  the  same  character  as 
those  on  account  of  which  so  many  scientists  deem 

252 


COMPLETE  AGNOSTICISM 

themselves  entitled  to  refuse  serious  consideration  to 
any  religious  creed.  The  interest  and  value  of  the 
latest  defences  of  '^  philosophic  doubt  "  depend  mainly 
on  their  being  a  criticism  of  the  claims  of  science  and 
of  the  pretensions  which  have  been  based  on  science. 

The  agnostic  solution  of  the  problem  of  knowledge, 
however  strange  or  unsatisfactory  it  may  seem  to  us, 
is  obviously  a  distinct  form  of  solving  it,  and  one  of  a 
thoroughly  radical  and  comprehensive  kind.  Hence 
it  should  not  be  ignored  by  us,  but  examined  as  to 
what  it  essentially  and  distinctively  is,  although  it 
may  never  have  been  fully  realised  as  such  in  any  one 
historical  system.  To  refuse  to  do  this  on  the  ground 
that  it  has  never  been  so  realised  is  a  clear  evasion  of 
logical  duty,  and  much  more  convenient  than  com- 
mendable. A  complete  agnosticism  is,  indeed,  no- 
where to  be  found,  and  consequently  a  refutation  of  it 
cannot  apply  strictly  and  immediately  or  with  full 
force  to  the  teaching  of  any  actual  individual  agnos- 
tic. It  is,  therefore,  of  less  practical  use  than  it 
would  be  were  complete  agnosticism  prevalent.  It 
leaves  a  special  examination  and  refutation  of  each 
form  of  agnostic  doctrine  still  necessary.  It  is,  how- 
ever, useful,  and  even  essential,  in  its  place.  It  ap- 
plies indirectly  and  in  some  measure  to  all  that  is 
truly  agnosticism,  and,  indeed,  applies  to  it  precisely 
to  the  extent  to  which  it  is  truly  agnosticism.  All 
incomplete  agnosticism  tends  to  completion,  and 
must  be  so  far  judged  of  by  what  it  would  be  if  com- 
plete. All  actual  agnosticism  must  be  viewed  in  re- 
lation to  that  absolute  agnosticism  which  is  simply 

253 


COMPLETE   OK  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

the  full  natural  and  logical  development  of  agnosti- 
cism. 

III.  SPECIES  OF  COMPLETE  AGNOSTICISM.       INCONSIST- 
ENCY  OF   SYSTEMATIC   AND   UNIVEESAL   DOUBT 

The  agnosticism  which  professes  to  be  complete,  or 
at  least  aims  at  completeness,  both  as  to  extent  and 
nature,  may  be  received  in  various  aspects  or  rela- 
tions. Let  us  consider  it  first  as  to  self-consistency 
or  rational  self-coherence. 

1.  Complete  agnosticism  is  either  systematic  and 
universal  doubt  or  systematic  and  universal  disbelief. 
This  is  not  the  vievs'  commonly  taken.  Complete  ag- 
nosticism is  generally  considered  to  be  merely  system- 
atic and  universal  doubt.  It  is  said  that  to  disbelieve 
is,  in  reality,  to  believe  that  what  is  disbelieved  is  er- 
roneous, and,  therefore,  that  it  is  incompatible  with 
the  force  or  philosophical  scepticism  which  is  desig- 
nated agnosticism. 

But  to  doubt  is  also  in  the  same  way  to  believe; 
it  is  to  believe  that  there  is  no  warrant  for  a  decision, 
— that  there  is  such  a  want  of  evidence  in  regard  to  a 
proposition,  or  that  the  evidence  for  and  the  evidence 
against  a  proposition  are  so  nearly  balanced  that  we 
are  not  entitled  either  to  affirm  or  deny  that  proposi- 
tion. The  opposite  of  belief  is  neither  disbelief  nor 
doubt  but  the  absence  of  belief.  An  element  of  belief 
can  no  more  be  eliminated  from  doubt  than  from  dis- 
belief. If  this  be  inconsistent  with  absolute  philo- 
sophical  scepticism   or  complete   agnosticism,    inas- 

254 


ITS  SELF-CONTRADICTORINESS 

much  as  it  means  that  neither  by  doubting  or  denying 
can  belief  be  entirely  got  rid  of,  it  is  only  because 
such  scepticism  or  agnosticism  is  not,  and  cannot  be, 
self-consistent. 

A  man  believing  nothing  except  that  he  knows 
notliing  still  believes  something.  He  does  not  believe 
more,  however,  than  a  man  who  doubts  whether  he 
knows  anything  or  not ;  on  the  contrary,  more  belief 
is  reserved  in  the  doubt  of  the  latter  than  in  the  dis- 
belief of  the  former.  A  man  who  disbelieves  his 
senses  on  the  ground  that  the  senses  are  unveracious, 
is  at  least  as  much  of  a  sceptic  and  agnostic  as  one 
who  cannot  decide  whether  to  believe  them  or  not. 
"No  doubt  can  be  more  sweepingly  sceptical  or  agnostic 
than  an  absolute  denial  of  the  possibility  of  knowl- 
edge. The  utmost  extreme  and  extravagance  of  ag- 
nosticism is  to  be  attained  not  through  mere  doubt 
but  through  a  double  negation,  which,  by  first  denying 
all  things  and  then  denying  itself,  leaves  reason  ob- 
jectless and  powerless — a  double  negation  for  which 
Arcesilaos  may  have  found  the  formula,  although  not 
meaning  to  convey  by  it  the  signification,  when,  in 
opposition  to  the  "  I  know  nothing,  except  that  I 
know  nothing,"  of  Socrates,  he  said,  "  I  know  noth- 
ing, not  even  that  I  know  nothing." 

Agnosticism,  then,  may  be  regarded  as  either  doubt 
or  disbelief  of  the  attainability  of  knowledge  and 
truth,  and  the  question  now  before  us  is.  Can  a  com- 
plete or  absolute  agnosticism  be  self -consistent  ?  It 
is  a  question  which  I  can  only  answer  in  the  negative. 
While  agnosticism  must  be  inconsistent  so  long  as  it  is 

255 


1^. 


COMPLETE  OE  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

not  complete,  it  cannot  be  consistent  when  it  is  com- 
plete. It  is  of  its  very  nature  inconsistent  and  self- 
contradictory.  It  is  so,  alike  as  universal  disbelief 
and  as  universal  doubt.  Both  of  these  states  of  mind 
are  essentially  irrational.  And  the  irrational  can- 
not become  rational  by  logical  development;  incon- 
sistency cannot  be  transformed  into  consistency  by 
being  completed. 

To  make  manifest  the  self-contradictoriness  latent 
in  the  strictly  absolute  agnosticism  alike  of  doubt  and 
of  disbelief  is  the  task  now  immediately  before  us. 

Agnosticism,  then,  cannot  be  self-consistent  in  the 
form  of  systematic  and  universal  doubt.  It  supposes 
even  in  this  form  a  power  of  weighing  evidence  which 
is  irreconcilable  with  the  absolute  distrust  and  inde- 
cision which  it  inculcates.  Men  do  not  doubt,  any 
more  than  they  believe  or  disbelieve,  what  they  have 
no  evidence  either  for  or  against,  and  know  nothing 
about.  So  far  from  implying  an  entire  absence  of 
judgment,  doubt  is  a  suspension  of  judgment  based 
on  the  judgment  that  neither  an  affirmative  nor  a  neg- 
ative judgment  would  be  warranted  in  the  circum- 
stances. Where  evidence  and  knowledge  are  wholly 
wanting,  belief,  disbelief,  and  doubt  are  alike  out  of 
place.  The  mind  is  then  a  blank,  unintelligent  and 
unconscious;  but  this  state  of  mere  blankness  or 
emptiness,  if  it  can  be  called  a  state,  is  wholly  differ- 
ent from  doubt. 

Doubt  is  an  actual  or  positive  condition  of  mind, 
and  often  a  most  legitimate  and  valuable  one,  but  it 
requires  justification  equally  with  belief  and  disbe- 

256 


LIMITS  OF  DOUBT 

lief,  and  it  can  only  be  justified  by  showing  that  the 
reasons  both  for  belief  and  disbelief,  for  affirmation 
and  negation,  are  insufficient — that  they  counterbal- 
ance and  counteract  one  another.  This  implies,  how- 
ever, that  the  mind  is  competent  to  estimate  the  rea- 
sons both  for  belief  and  disbelief,  for  affirmation  and 
negation,  and  to  weigh  the  one  set  of  reasons  against 
the  other  set.  It  supposes  that  belief,  disbelief,  and 
doubt  should  correspond  to  evidence,  and  that  evi- 
dence may  be  so  apprehended  and  appreciated  as  to 
explain  and  effectuate  the  correspondence.  A  mind 
altogether  incapable  of  knowing  itself  entitled  to  be- 
lieve and  disbelieve  must  be  as  incapable  of  knowing 
itself  entitled  to  doubt,  and,  consequently,  must  be  as 
much  bound  to  suspend  its  doubt  as  its  belief  or  its 
disbelief ;  or,  in  other  words,  must  not  reason,  judge, 
or  think  at  all.  Everything  short  of,  or  different 
from,  the  entire  ejection  of  intelligence,  the  absolute 
suppression  of  rational  activity,  must  be  irrational  in 
a  mind  so  constituted ;  and,  in  fact,  such  a  mind  would 
be  a  reason  of  which  every  movement  would  be  neces- 
sarily unreasonable.  The  mind  of  man  has  not  been 
so  constituted,  and  is  not  thus  under  the  appearance 
of  rationality  realised  absurdity  ;  and  hence  its  doubt- 
ing, not  less  than  its  believing  and  disbelieving,  prop- 
erly exercised,  is  a  perfectly  legitimate  mode  of 
existence  and  activity — one  dependent  on  and  accord- 
ant with  reason. 

Doubt,  pushed  to  its  utmost  extent,  is  only  intel- 
ligible on  the  supposition  that  the  mind  can  appreciate 
evidence,  and  distinguish  between  truth  and  error. 

257 


COMPLETE   OR  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

It  presupposes,  in  other  words,  the  very  truth  and  cer- 
tainty which  the  agnostic  would  persuade  us  it  sets 
aside.  Thus  we  have  only  to  compare  the  latent  as- 
sumptions from  which  the  agnostic  reasons  with  the 
conclusion  at  which  he  arrives,  to  find  that  his  alleged 
demonstration  of  absolute  doubt  is  also  a  reductio  ad 
ahsurdum,  of  such  doubt,  the  doubt  itself  being  essen- 
tially inconsistent.  The  agnosticism  of  absolute 
doubt  is  self-condemned  by  its  self-contradiction. 

The  agnostic,  it  is  often  said,  can  have  no  creed. 
The  saying  shows  lack  of  reflection :  no  rational  J)eing 
can  be  creedless.  The  agnostic  can  no  more  dispense 
with  a  creed  than  his  neighbours,  although  it  may  be 
peculiarly  difficult  or  inconvenient  for  him  to  profess 
that  he  has  one.  He  needs  a  creed_eYenin  order  to 
prove  that  there  should  be  none.  The  advocate  of 
universal  doubt  cannot  take  a  single  step  towards  the 
vindication  of  his  doubt  unless  he  believes,  and  be- 
lieves himself  to  know  what  certainty,  knowledge,  evi- 
dence, and  truth  are.  He  may,  and,  indeed,  as  a 
matter  of  course,  will  prefer  such  views  of  certainty, 
knowledge,  evidence,  and  truth  as  seem  to  him  most 
likely  to  subserve  his  purpose,  but  the  very  choice  and 
use  of  these  or  any  views  regarding  them  implies  a 
belief  in  the  very  things — certainty,  knowledge,  evi- 
dence, and  truth — of  which  universal  doubt  is  the 
negation.  "  The  very  logic,"  says  Edward  Caird, 
"  by  which  the  sceptic  overthrows  the  dogmas  of  phi- 
losophy, implies  that  the  mind  possesses  in  itself  the 
form  and  idea  of  truth.  His  deepest  doubt  reveals  a 
certitude  that  transcends  and  embraces  it." 

258 


EELATION  OF  BELIEF  TO   KNOWLEDGE 

There  is  a  haziness  of  conception  in  the  minds  of 
many  persons  as  to  the  real  relationship  of  doubt  to 
belief  and  disbelief  which  cannot  but  prevent  full  rec- 
ognition of  the  force  of  the  preceding  remarks.  Per- 
haps a  few  words  may  somewhat  help  to  clear  it 
away. 

Belief  is  the  assent  of  the  mind  to  what  it  regards 
as  true — to  what  it  thinks  it  knows.  It  is  easily  dis- 
tinguishable from  such  mental  states  as  imagination, 
feeling,  desire,  and  volition,  but  inseparable  from  all 
rational  intellection  both  intuitive  and  discursive, 
and  coextensive  with  true  and  erroneous  judgment, 
real  and  imagined  knowledge.  No  man  can  believe 
anything  which  he  does  not  suppose  that  he  knows  to 
be  true.  What  the  mind  in  belief  regards  as  true 
may  not  be  true,  but  it  cannot  believe  what  it  does  not 
apprehend  as  true ;  what  the  mind  believes  it  knows 
it  may  not  know,  but  without  believing  that  it  knows 
it  cannot  believe  at  all.  There  is  thus  in  the  very 
nature  of  belief  a  direct  reference  to  knowledge  and 
truth.  Those  who  would  base  all  knowledge  on 
mere  belief  or  reduce  all  knowledge  to  mere  belief 
overlook  that  there  is  no  such  thing  as  mere  belief,  as 
entirely^self -contained  belief ;  that  there  is  only  belief 
which  includes  a  reference  and  appeal  to  knowledge 
and  truth.  Those  who  talk  of  a  belief  which  is  its 
own  guarantee  directly  contradict  the  testimony 
which  belief  bears  regarding  itself.  The  voice  of  all 
belief  is:  I  speak  not  on  my  own  authority;  I  have 
no  right  to  acceptance  or  existence  except  what  I  re- 
ceive from  knowledge  and  truth. 

259 


COMPLETE  OR  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

Belief  adheres  iudissoliibly  to  all  knowledge. 
Whatever  we  know,  we  believe.  There  is  no  differ- 
ence in  this  respect  between  immediate  or  intuitive 
and  mediate  or  discursive  knowledge ;  between  pre- 
sentative  and  representative  knowledge ;  between 
knowledge  of  the  past,  present,  or  future;  between 
the  knowledge  which  comes  to  us  through  sense,  or 
through  the  understanding,  or  through  the  reason.  It 
has  often  been  attempted  by  the  perverse  use  of  terms 
to  separate  belief  from  knowledge,  and  to  oppose  the 
one  to  the  other,  but  every  attempt  of  the  kind  is  so- 
phistical and  irrational.  The  opposition  of  belief  to 
knowledge  has  no  proper  meaning  or  justification. 
Wherever  there  is  knowledge,  there  is  belief  founded 
on  the  knowledge ;  and  wherever  there  is  belief  not 
founded  on  knowledge,  it  is  illegitimate  and  self-con- 
tradictory belief.  Of  course,  there  is  an  immense 
amount  of  belief  of  the  latter  kind — of  belief  in  a 
knowledge  which  is  not  real  but  imaginary,  of  assent 
to  error  under  the  impression  that  it  is  truth.  Be- 
lief, while  co-extensive  with  real  knowledge,  is  far 
more  extensive ;  it  is  as  inseparable  from  false  as 
from  true  judgment,  from  the  abnormal  as  from  the 
normal  workings  of  the  mind  in  the  exercise  of  its 
cognitive  faculties. 

A  world  where  belief  was  precisely  co-extensive 
with  knowledge,  precisely  in  accordance  with  evi- 
dence, would  be  a  world  where  there  were  no  erro- 
neous beliefs.  Our  world  is  still  very  far,  indeed, 
from  being  such  a  world.  It  is,  however,  the  goal 
which  a  rational  world  should  strive  to  reach.     It  is 

260 


BELIEF  AND   DISBELIEF 

the  ideal  at  which  a  rational  man  should  aim.  We 
cannot  believe  what  we  do  not  know,  or  think  we 
know ;  hut  we  have  no  right  to  believe  more  than  we 
know,  or  to  be  content  with  merely  thinking  we  know 
instead  of  trying  our  best  really  and  truly  to  know. 
Evidence  should  be  the  measure  of  assent.  All  real 
evidence  we  are  bound  to  receive,  and  to  estimate  ac- 
cording to  its  actual  weight  and  value. 

What  is  true  of  belief  is  equally  true  of  disbelief, 
and  for  the  simple  reason  that  disbelief  is  belief.  But 
slight  reflection  is  needed  to  dispel  the  common  notion 
that  disbelief  is  the  opposite  of  belief.  The  man  who 
disbelieves  in  Irish  Home  Rule  believes  just  as  much 
as  the  man  who  believes  in  it,  only  he  believes  that  it 
would  be  bad,  whereas  the  other  believes  that  it  would 
be  good.  Disbelief  is  not  the  opposite  of  belief,  but 
belief  of  the  opposite — belief  that  a  particidar  propo- 
sition is  not  true.  The  believer  and  the  disbeliever 
differ  only  in  that  their  beliefs  differ  and  conflict. 
Both  have  beliefs,  and  they  are  alike  responsible  for 
the  character  and  correctness  of  their  beliefs. 

Nor  is  doubt  the  opposite  of  belief.  To  doubt  is  to 
believe  that  there  is  not  warrant  for  a  firm  decision, 
— that  there  is  insufficient  evidence  for  a  resolved  and 
settled  belief.  It  implies  a  commingling  of  belief 
and  disbelief;  or,  as  it  may  be  also  expressed — since 
disbelief  is  itself  belief — a  combination  of  positive 
and  negative  is  belief.  When  the  evidence  in  favour 
of  a  proposition  seems  to  a  man  full,  he  believes  and 
does  not  doubt ;  when  the  evidence  against  it  seems  to 
him  full,  he  disbelieves  and  does  not  doubt ;  when  the 

261 


COMPLETE   OE  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

evidence  in  regard  to  it  seems  to  him  inadequate  in 
amount  or  ambiguous  in  character,  partly  in  favour 
of  and  partly  against  its  affirmation,  he  partly  be- 
lieves and  partly  disbelieves — believes  because  there 
is  evidence,  and  disbelieves  because  it  is  not  of  such 
quantity  and  quality  as  to  show  whether  the  proposi- 
tion be  true  or  not — and  only  in  this  case  does  he 
doubt.  Doubt  is  thus  of  a  double  nature :  a  mixture 
of  belief  and  unbelief ;  the  opposite  of  neither  belief 
nor  disbelief,  but  only  of  assured  belief  or  assured 
disbelief.  It  is  so  far  from  being  a  state  of  mind  in- 
dependent of,  or  distinct  from,  belief  or  disbelief, 
that  it  may  approximate  closely  to  both  and  be  diffi- 
cult to  distinguish  from  either.  We  may  think  that 
we  believe  when  there  is  much  unbelief  in  our  belief, 
and  that  we  doubt  when  there  is  much  faith  in  our 
doubt.  "  More  faith,"  the  poet  truly  tells  us,  "  may 
live  in  honest  doubt  than  in  half  the  creeds."  The 
conflict  of  judgments  and  the  counteraction  of  belief 
and  disbelief  in  doubt  are  what  is  characteristic  of  it, 
and  what  the  very  terms  for  doubt  in  the  various  lan- 
guages of  the  world  show  that  men  have  everywhere 
recognised  to  be  its  characteristic. 

Belief  and  disbelief,  then,  are  two  species  of  belief, 
and  doubt  contains  both  and  arises  from  their  coun- 
teraction. Wherever  there  is  perceptive  or  intellect- 
ive judgment,  intuition,  or  inference  of  any  kind, 
there  also  is  belief  in  its  positive,  negative,  or  dubita- 
tive  form ;  and  in  whatever  form  it  appears,  it  should 
correspond  to  the  relevant  attainable  evidence.  When 
Dr.  Bain  and  other  psychologists  tell  us  that  doubt 

262 


NATUEE  OF   DOUBT 

is  the  opposite  of  belief,  they  are  obviously  mistaken. 
It  is  belief,  and  belief  of  a  particular  kind — belief 
that  the  reasons  for  and  the  reasons  against  some 
opinion  or  proposition  tend  more  or  less  to  counteract 
and  cancel  one  another,  and  so  warrant  neither  a  de- 
cidedly affirmative  nor  a  decidedly  negative  belief. 
It  necessarily  supposes  in  every  case  some  degree  of 
belief,  some  perception  of  evidence,  and  a  certain 
power  of  estimating  the  weight  and  worth  of  evi- 
dence. The  only  opposite  to  belief  is  the  absence 
of  belief,  and  there  can  only  be  the  entire  absence 
of  belief  in  a  mind  devoid  of  all  judgment  as  to  truth 
and  error  and  of  all  apprehension  of  evidence.  Entire 
ignorance  is  the  only  complete  security  against  doubt. 
"  Men  that  know  nothing  in  sciences,"  says  Arch- 
bishop Leighton,  "  have  no  doubts." 

If  doubt  be  of  the  nature  now  described,  the  essen- 
tial inconsistency  of  the  agnosticism  of  absolute  doubt 
is  apparent.  Doubt  in  every  case  requires  to  justify 
itself  no  less  than  belief  or  disbelief.  It  ought 
equally  to  be"  in  accordance  with  evidence,  and  it  has 
specially  to  judge  the  evidence  both  for  and  against 
what  is  doubted.  It  should  give  heed  even  to  the 
least  evidence,  and  to  all  the  evidence  pro  and  con. 
It  is  the  most  complex  form  of  belief,  the  latest  to 
make  its  appearance  in  consciousness  and  history,  and 
the  most  difficult  correctly  to  regulate  or  appreciate. 
The  child,  the  savage,  and  the  common  man  believe 
and  disbelieve  more  readily  than  they  doubt.  Doubt 
is  a  peculiarly  unstable  state  of  mind.  Dubious 
questioning  is  to  men  in  general  unpleasant,  and  to 

263 


COMPLETE   OR  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

many  men  intolerable.  Dull  believing  or  vehement 
disbelieving  is  easier  to  them,  and  more  in  favour 
with  them  even  when  much  less  commendable. 

What,  theli,  would  justify  such  a  state  of  mind  as 
the  scepticism  of  absolute  or  universal  doubt  ?  Only 
a  completely  self-contradictory  world ;  one  in  which 
the  evidence  for  all  opinions  was  equal  to  the  evidence 
against  them;  one  in  which  reason  would  be  con- 
demned to  perpetual  self-stultification ;  one  in  which 
all  search  for  truth  and  weighing  of  evidence  would 
necessarily  lead  only  to  learned  ignorance  strictly 
and  literally  understood — an  ignorance  absolute  and 
complete,  and  yet  one  only  capable  of  being  estab- 
lished by  an  absolute  and  complete  knowledge.  In 
a  world  so  strangely  constituted  self-contradiction 
would  be  the  one  great  law,  and  the  pure  Pyrrhonist 
the  only  wise  man,  if  even  he  were  wise.  The  inhab- 
itants of  it  would  need  no  other  excuse  for  their  indi- 
vidual contradictions  and  inconsistencies  than  the 
words  of  the  poet : — 

"  Die  Welt  ist  voller  Widerspruch, 
Und  sollte  sich's  nicht  widersprechen  ?  " 

The  uniformly  self-contradictory  person  in  a  com- 
pletely self-contradictory  world  would,  if  I  may  say 
so,  be  the  only  self-consistent  character. 

The  existence  of  a  self-contradictory  world,  how- 
ever, has  never  yet  been  proved,  and  must  be  pecul- 
iarly difficult  to  prove  by  those  who  think  nothing 
can  be  proved.  So  far  as  I  can  judge,  it  has  never 
been  shown  that  there  are  any  other  contradictions 

264 


A   SELF-CONTKADICTORY   WORLD   ASSUMED 

in  the  world  than  those  for  which  such  beings  as  our- 
selves— beings  who  too  frequently  judge  and  act  irra- 
tionally— are  responsible. 


IV.    INCONSISTENCY    OF    SYSTEMATIC    AND    UNIVERSAL 
DISBELIEF 

Agnosticism,  I  proceed  to  maintain,  cannot  be  self- 
consistent  in  the  form  of  systematic  and  universal 
disbelief.  In  the  very  act  of  maintaining  that  truth 
cannot  be  reached,  it  implies  that  it  has  been  reached. 
It  is  a  denial  that  truth  can  be  attained,  but  an  af- 
firmation of  the  untrustworthiness  of  the  mind.  It 
rejects  all  that  the  mind  ordinarily  regards  as  true, 
but  on  the  ground  that  the  mind  is  incompetent  to 
ascertain  what  is  true.  Is,  then,  we  are  bound  to 
ask,  this  allegation  of  the  mind's  incompetency  to 
ascertain  truth  itself  true?  It  obviously  must  be 
held  to  be  so  by  those  who  make  it,  and  who  reject 
all  other  affirmations  on  the  strength  of  it.  Unless 
it  be  a  truth,  and  a  truth  better  established  than  all 
other  statements  asserted  to  be  truths,  agnosticism 
as  universal  disbelief,  as  denial  of  the  existence  and 
possibility  of  knowledge,  can  have  no  rational  war- 
rant. If,  on  the  other  hand,  it  be  a  truth,  what  is  to 
be  made  of  the  doctrine  that  truth  is  unattainable  ? 
Why,  in  this  case  truth  has  been  attained.  One  truth 
so  comprehensive  as  to  be  a  whole  philosophy  in  itself 
— a  truth  which  enables  us  to  decide  on  the  worth  of 
every  proposition  which  the  human  mind  can  enter- 
tain— has  been  actually  and  adequately  established. 

265 


COMPLETE   OK  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

If  the  mind,  however,  can  acquire  even  one  truth, 
and  especially  if  it  can  make  itself  master  of  so  ab- 
struse and  significant  a  truth  as  is  alleged,  it  cannot 
consistently  be  held  to  be  so  untrustworthy^  as  the  ag- 
nostic represents  it  to  be.  If  the  mind  be  justified  in 
one  instance  in  saying  No,  it  may  be  warranted  in 
other  instances  in  saying  Yes.  The  mind  which  can 
prove  its  own  incompetence  can  hardly  be  so  incom- 
petent after  all.  It  thereby  shows  itself  capable  of 
accomplishing  an  especially  arduous  task,  the  ascer- 
tainment of  its  own  utmost  reach  of  capacity  and  fac- 
ulty, of  what  it  absolutely  can  and  cannot  do.  This 
must  require  a  most  diflicult  and  elaborate  investiga- 
tion into  the  nature  and  limits  of  intelligence,  and 
the  reason  which  can  successfully  prosecute  it  cannot 
be  so  weak  as  is  asserted.  There  is  no  kind  of  re- 
search in  which  failure  is  more  probable.  There  is 
no  question  as  to  which  the  mind  is  less  likely  to  suc- 
ceed in  finding  an  answer  than  that  as  to  the  limits 
of  jts  own  capacities.  Hence  the  agnostic  negation 
is  a  denial  that  truth  can  be  reached  in  cases  where  its 
attainment  should  be  comparatively  easy,  based  on 
the  presupposition  that  it  has  been  reached  in  a  case 
where  its  attainment  must  be  peculiarly  difficult. 

That  it  is  a  negation — a  denial  of  the  right  of  the 
intellect  to  accept  anything  as  true — clearly  does  not 
aifect  the  argument.  It  has  no  relevancy  as  an  an- 
swer to  it.  A  negative  conclusion  should  be  as  much 
a  result  of  investigation  as  a  positive  one.  A  nega- 
tive judgment,  if  really  warranted,  is  as  much  a  truth 
as  an  affirmative  one.     Disbelief,  as  already  shown, 

366 


WHAT  UNIVERSAL  DISBELIEF  IMPLIES 

is  not  the  opposite  of  belief  but  belief  of  the  opposite, 
and  as  much  dei^endent  on  truth  and  evidence  as  the 
opposite  belief.  Nor  is  disbelief — negative  belief — 
easier  to  prove  than  belief — positive  belief.  Nay,  a 
negative  is  often  specially  difficult  to  prove.  And 
the  difficulty  of  proving  the  vast  and  daring  negative 
distinctive  of  complete  agnostic  disbelief  must  be 
enormous.  In  fact,  it  would  require  omniscience  to  ^ 
accomplish  such  a  task.  To  affirm  rationally  what  ( 
cannot  be  known  one  must  have  a  comprehensive  ac-  \ 
quaintance  with  whatever  is  or  mav  be:  in  other 
words,  to  know  that  nothing  is  knowable  one  would 
require  to  have  a  thorough  knowledge  of  everything. 
But  an  agnosticism  thus  absolute  would  be  identical 
with  a  complete  gnosticism.  The  sceptical  "  there  is 
no  attainable  knowledge  of  truth  "  is  uttermost  scep- 
ticism ;  but  it  implies  an  "  I  know  that  there  is  no 
attainable  knowledge  of  truth,"  which  is  an  expres- 
sion of  the  uttermost  conceivable  dogmatism,  and  all 
the  more  dogmatic  owing  to  its  self-contradictoriness. 
Suppose  disbelief  pushed  to  the  uttermost  point 
conceivable.  Suppose  a  man  to  maintain  that  we 
have  no  warrant  to  believe  anything  and  should  dis- 
believe everything.  Does  he  thereby  get  rid  of  belief 
or  its  obligations  ?  By  no  means.  He  is  left  with 
an  enormous  amount  of  belief  for  which  he  ought  to 
have  good  reasons.  His  disbelief  includes  belief  that 
every  affirmative  proposition  which  the  human  mind 
can  entertain  is  false,  and  implies  belief  that  the  evi- 
dence seemingly  for  every  such  proposition  is  unsat- 
isfactory while  the  evidence  against  it  is  conclusive. 

267 


COMPLETE   OR  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

Now  a  man  with  so  much  belief  as  that  has  surely 
more  instead  of  less  of  it  than  his  neighbours.  And 
although  he  may,  in  one  sense,  rightly  call  himself 
an  unbeliever  or  sceptic,  he  may  in  another  and  as 
legitimate  a  sense  be  justly  maintained  to  be  a  greater 
dogmatist  than  any  scholastic  metaphysician  or  infal- 
libilist  theologian  known  to  history. 

Such  a  sceptic  has  much  faith  of  a  kind,  and  of  a 
kind  greatly  in  need  of  strong  proof.  It  is  a  faith 
which  presupposes  a  demonstration  that  the  world  is 
one  which  warrants  the  inference  only  of  negative 
propositions.  What  sort  of  world  would  that  be  ? 
One  entirely  disappointing  to  intelligence.  One  of 
which  the  very  existence  is  inconceivable,  and  which 
were  it  real  would  be  at  every  moment  and  point  of 
its  existence  an  offence  and  torture  to  thought.  Not 
even  the  most  self-confident,  perhaps,  of  transcen- 
dentalist  metaphysicians  will  dare  to  grapple  with 
the  dread  idea  of  a  world  of  which  nothing  except 
negations  are  true ;  and  certainly  no  one  else  will  be 
so  audacious.  Fortunately  the  world  of  experience 
neither  demands  from  us  the  superhuman  intellectual 
exertions  nor  inflicts  on  us  the  continuous  and  intol- 
erable intellectual  disappointment  which  the  world  of 
the  absolute  agnosticism  of  disbelief  must  do.  The 
actual  world  often  yields,  indeed,  to  our  investigations 
merely  so-called  "  negative  results " ;  but  they  are 
"  negative  "  only  in  the  sense  that  they  negate  our 
misconceptions  of  its  realities ;  not  in  a  sense  which 
would  put  the  world  itself  and  reason  itself  to  shame. 


268 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  FIRST  PRINCIPLES 

V.   ABSOLUTE   AGNOSTICISM   AND   FIEST    PRINCIPLES 

Absolute  agnosticism  we  have  argued  to  be  inher- 
ently inconsistent.  Let  us  now  consider  it  in  relation 
to  the  primary  grounds  of  belief,  the  ultimate  princi- 
ples of  knowledge. 

The  reality  and  validity  of  such  primary  grounds 
or  ultimate  principles  are  implied  in  all  knowledge 
and  reasoning.  The  most  radical  and  resolute  scep- 
ticism cannot  dispense  with  the  use  of  them  even  when 
attempting  to  displace  and  discredit  them.  It  must 
assume  and  proceed  on  them  even  in  order  to  vindi- 
cate its  rejection  of  them.  However  complete,  it 
cannot  free  itself  from  the  obligation  of  trying  to 
prove  its  assertions  and  endeavouring  to  convince 
others  of  their  truth.  Committed  although  it  be  to 
deny  or  question  the  reality  or  attainability  of  truth, 
it  must  claim  to  be  itself  true  and  truly  established, 
and  so  far  imply  that  there  is  truth,  and  that  truth 
can  be  distinguished  from  error.  While  unable  to 
admit  that  there  is  knowledge,  it  is  not  entitled  to 
believe  or  assert  that  there  is  none  unless  it  knows  its 
belief  or  assertion  to  be  well  founded,  which  of  itself 
would  prove  that  there  is  knowledge,  and  that  knowl- 
edge is  distinguishable  from  ignorance  and  illusion. 
The  very  doubt  or  disbelief  distinctive  of  the  agnostic 
supposes,  in  fact,  a  faith  which  implies  a  creed,  a 
whole  system  of  judgments,  which,  notwithstanding 
the  agnostic  denial  of  knowledge,  only  knowledge  can 
justify.  Further,  agnosticism  professes  to  be  a  kind 
of  philosophy,  and  undertakes  to  support  and  defend 

369 


COMPLETE  OR  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICLSM 

itself  and  to  assail  and  overthrow  other  systems  by 
means  of  reason  and  reasoning.  And  this  implies 
that  there  are  laws  of  rational  procedure,  and  some 
criterion  or  criteria  by  which  it  may  be  determined 
when  these  laws  are  observed  and  when  violated. 

It  follows  that  the  question  as  to  the  relationship 
of  absolute  agnosticism  to  primary  principles  of 
knowledge  must  be  one  which  vitally  concerns  it. 
What,  then,  is  that  relationship  ? 

Well,  in  the  first  place,  such  an  agnosticism,  if  an 
agnosticism  of  doubt,  must  obviously  doubt  all  first 
principles,  and  if  an  agnosticism  of  disbelief,  must 
disbelieve  them.  W^hat  it  clearly  cannot  do  is  to  be- 
lieve them.  It  must  reject  them ;  cannot  without  self- 
destruction  accept  them.  Its  attitude  towards  self- 
evidence  is  necessarily  that  of  distrust  or  denial,  not 
that  of  trust.  In  a  word,  it  must  assume  that  there 
are  no  primary  grounds  of  belief,  no  first  principles 
of  knowledge.  If  there  be  any  such  grounds  or  prin- 
ciples knowledge  exists ;  its  foundations  are  laid,  and 
a  complete  agnosticism  is  manifestly  extravagant. 

In  the  second  place,  the  agnosticism  in  question  is 
not  only  logically  bound  to  make  the  assumption  that 
there  are  no  first  principles,  but  vitally  interested  in 
adhering  to  it.  To  have  to  admit  that  the  assump- 
tion is  unwarranted  is  for  it  equivalent  to  having  to 
acknowledge  itself  throughout  essentially  untenable. 
If  the  foundations  of  knowledge  be  solid,  if  the  laws 
which  regulate  intellectual  activity  be  trustworthy, 
the  theory  that  the  mind  of  man  can  build  up  only 
false  and  illusory  structures  must  be  extravagant. 

270 


AGNOSTICISM   REJECTS  FIRST  PRINCIPLES 

Absolute  agnosticism,  then,  is  incapable  of  either 
taking  up  or  maintaining  an  impartial  attitude  tow- 
ards first  principles.  It  may  profess  to  be  fairly 
and  reasonably  critical  of  them,  and  neither  more  nor 
less;  but  it  cannot  really  afford  to  be  so.  Its  rela- 
tionship towards  them  is  of  necessity  as  faulty  as  that 
of  the  most  thorough  dogmatism.  A  right  relation- 
ship to  them  is  one  which  does  not  exclude  criticism 
of  them,  but  which  does  exclude  alike  arbitrary  rejec- 
tion of  them  and  predetermination  to  prove  them  un- 
trustworthy. 

It  does  not  exclude,  I  say,  criticism  of  them — any 
criticism  of  them  which  is  just  and  rational.  On  the 
contrary,  it  is  a  manifestly  incumbent  and  important 
part  of  the  work  of  philosophy  to  criticise  and  test  all 
principles  alleged  to  be  primary  either  as  constitutive 
of  knowledge  or  regulative  of  its  growth.  Ordinary 
thought,  of  course,  does  not  do  so.  It  accepts  them 
without  question;  apprehends,  believes,  and  acts  on 
them  unreflectively  as  self-evident.  And  this  is  quite 
natural.  It  is  all  that  the  ordinary  man  can  do,  and 
all  that  he  feels  the  slightest  need  of  doing.  But 
there  is  an  obvious  disadvantage  attached  to  his  mode 
of  procedure.  The  ordinary  man  very  often  accepts 
as  self-evident  what  is  extremely  questionable  or  en- 
tirely erroneous.  What  he  deems  primary  certainties 
may  be  merely  inherited  or  current  prejudices.  What 
he  trusts  as  natural  reason  or  common-sense  may  be 
unnatural  or  nonsensical.  A  genuine  philosopher 
cannot  take  the  ordinary  man  as  his  guide  or  example. 

Nor  can  he  take  as  such  the  ■  ordinary  scientist. 
271 


COMPLETE   OR  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

The  scientific  specialist  is,  of  course,  much  more  care- 
ful in  his  dealing  with  first  principles  than  the  ordi- 
nary man ;  but  his  attitude  towards  them  is  not  essen- 
tially different.  He  does  not  any  more  than  the 
ordinary  man  make  them  a  subject  of  special  investi- 
gation. He  does  not  discriminate  them  from  all  else 
that  is  to  be  found  in  thought,  and  examine  them  in 
themselves,  in  their  inter-relations,  and  their  bear- 
ings on  knowledge  as  a  whole.  He  simply  selects 
those  of  which  as  a  specialist  he  has  need,  and  of  the 
peculiar  worth  of  which  he  is  aware.  Scientific 
thought  is  thus,  like  ordinary  thought,  uncritical  in 
its  attitude  towards  knowledge  and  the  first  princi- 
ples thereof.  None  of  the  special  sciences  start  with 
a  criticism  and  theory  of  knowledge.  And  in  so  do- 
ing they  act  wisely,  for  otherwise  they  would  find  it 
difficult  to  start  at  all. 

Philosophy  even  may  so  far  proceed  in  the  same 
way.  Its  province  is,  not  like  that  of  the  sciences, 
mere  sections  of  knowledge,  but  knowledge  as  a  whole. 
It  may,  however,  simply  accept  knowledge  as  given  to 
it  through  the  sciences ;  or,  in  other  words,  may  make 
the  sciences  the  object  of  its  study,  trace  their  rela- 
tions, exhibit  them  as  an  organic  whole,  co-ordinate 
and  combine  their  conclusions,  and  present  to  the 
mind  as  correct  a  picture  as  it  can  of  the  whole  intel- 
ligible world  from  the  results  thus  obtained.  Philos- 
ophy at  this  stage — what  may  be  called  positive  or 
scientific  philosophy — differs  from  ordinary  thought 
and  special  scientific  thought  simply  in  virtue  of  its 
generality  or  comprehensiveness.     It  is  not  self-criti- 

272 


PHILOSOPHY    AND   FIRST   PRINCIPLES 

cisiiig  thought ;  although  reasoned  it  is  unreflective ; 
it  builds  up  what  is  admitted  to  be  knowledge  into  a 
systematic  or  structural  unity,  but  it  does  not  inquire 
what  so-called  knowledge  is  or  is  essentially  worth ;  it 
is  merely  an  advance  on  special  science,  as  special 
science  itself  is  on  ordinary  knowledge,  and  ordinary 
knowledge  on  crude  sensation.  Along  the  whole  line 
the  mind  never  changes  its  attitude  towards  its  ob- 
jects ;  at  the  end  this  is  just  what  it  was  at  the  begin- 
ning ;  it  is  assumptive  and  dogmatic  throughout. 

Philosophy,  however,  may  assume,  and  is  bound  to 
assume,  another  attitude ;  may  pass,  and  ought  to  pass, 
from  a  dogmatic  to  a  critical  stage.  It  is  called  on  to 
undertake  a  task  which  neither  ordinary  thought  nor 
special  science  can  perform,  and  yet  which  is  a  much- 
needed  supplement  to  the  work  of  both — ^namely,  a 
methodical  and  impartial  examination  of  the  condi- 
tions and  guarantees  of  knowledge  as  such,  and  in 
whatever  form  it  may  appear.  And  in  the  fulfilment 
of  this  duty  it  must  be  largely  a  criticism  of  the  so- 
called  primary  or  ultimate  principles  of  knowledge. 

The  criticism  may  conceivably  lead  to  a  completely 
sceptical  result ;  that  is  to  say,  it  may  show  all  so- 
called  knowledge  to  be  credulity  and  all  so-called 
science  to  be  illusory.  It  may  conceivably  convict 
reason  itself  of  being  responsible  for  the  inconsist- 
encies in  agnostic  argumentation,  and  make  so  mani- 
fest the  constitutional  invalidity  and  vanity  of 
thought  as,  in  a  sort  of  way,  to  justify  the  claim  of 
absolute  agnosticism  to  be  the  best  philosophy  attain- 
able.    The  conceivability  of  the  criticism  having  so 

273 


COMPLETE  OR  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

tremendous  an  issue,  however,  is  not  a  sufficient 
ground  for  refusing  to  undertake  it.  Rather  is  it 
a  reason  for  undertaking  it,  and  for  conducting  it  in 
as  earnest  and  thorough  a  manner  as  possible. 

The  right,  then,  of  the  sceptic  to  institute  a  criti- 
cism of  the  conditions  of  knowledge  is  not  here  called 
in  question.  On  the  contrary,  to  institute  it  is  fully 
admitted  to  be  a  philosophical  duty.  Nor  is  it  over- 
severity  or  even  over-subtility  which  is  held  to  be  the 
fault  of  the  sceptical  criticism  of  principles.  What  it 
is  charged  with  is  unfairness,  unreasonableness. 

The  most  thorough  sceptic  can  no  more  refuse  to 
proceed  from  and  make  use  of  first  principles  than  the 
most  absolute  dogmatist.  Let  him  analyse  the  men- 
tal processes  and  verbal  argumentations  through 
which  he  reaches  and  justifies  his  sceptical  views  and 
conclusions,  and  he  must  inevitably  find  those  princi- 
ples to  have  been  his  own  primary  assumptions. 
Hence  he  is  as  much  bound  as  other  thinkers  to  be- 
ware of  taking  for  first  principles  what  are  not  such. 
He  ought  carefully  to  distinguish  them  from  all  that 
is  of  an  a  posteriori,  particular,  contingent,  or  infer- 
ential character  in  intellection  and  belief.  He  should 
criticise  every  apparent  first  principle  with  a  view 
to  determine  whether  it  is  not  merely  apparent,  or 
secondary,  or  false.  He  should  only  accept  it  as  what 
it  seems  or  is  said  to  be  after  he  has  satisfied  himself 
that  it  really  is  primary  or  a  priori;  that  it  is  self- 
evident  and  necessary — not  only  immediately  seen  to 
be  true,  but  what  must  be  true ;  and  that  it  is  natural 
and  universal — true  always  and  everywhere,  true  for 

274 


PROOF   OF  FIRST   PRINCIPLES 

all  persons  and  in  all  cases.  So  far  as  he  merely  does 
that  he  is  plainly  within  his  right,  and  only  acts  as  he 
ought  to  do. 

But  as  plainly  he  has  no  right  to  resist  real  self- 
evidence  or  to  reject  what  are  truly  first  principles. 
That,  however,  is  precisely  what  an  absolute  agnostic 
never  fails  to  do,  and  indeed,  must  do.  His  whole 
hypothesis  compels  him  to  take  up  a  distinctly  an- 
tagonistic attitude  towards  first  principles.  He  can- 
not afford  to  assent  even  to  self-evidence.  Were  he 
to  do  so  he  would  have  no  case.  He  must  refuse  to 
acknowledge  the  reality  and  validity  even  of  first 
principles.  And  that  is  an  obviously  wrong  at- 
titude to  assume  towards  them.  Primary  and  self- 
evident  truths,  necessary  conditions  of  knowledge,  are 
entitled  to  be  trusted.  Mental  sanity  requires  their 
acceptance.  Whoever  rejects  them,  whoever  begins 
with  doubt  or  disbelief  of  them,  starts  as  an  agnostic 
in  order  that  he  may  end  as  one,  and  so  be  consistent 
in  absurdity  throughout.  The  absolute  agnostic 
must  act  thus. 

His  demand  for  proof  of  what  are  truly  primitive 
judgments  or  first  principles  is,  of  course,  one  which 
cannot  be  met,  but  it  is  also  one  which  it  is  irrational 
to  make.  They  cannot  be  conclusions  of  any  process 
of  proof  seeing  that  they  are  the  conditions  of  all 
proofs  and  conclusions.  "  Did  not  reasoning,"  said 
Royer-Collard,  "  rest  upon  principles  anterior  to  it- 
self, analysis  would  be  without  end,  and  synthesis 
without  commencement."  As  all  reasoning  supposes 
knowledge,  all  knowledge  cannot  be  gained  by  reason- 

275 


COMPLETE  OK  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

ing.  In  refusing  to  accept  first  principles  without 
proof  an  agnostic  acts  as  foolishly  as  a  man  who 
should  insist  on  being  provided  with  a  medium 
wherewith  he  may  see  light,  although  light  is  itself 
the  only  medium  by  which  anything  can  be  seen. 

The  right  attitude  of  mind,  then,  towards  first 
principles  is  that  of  belief,  because  of  their  self-evi- 
dence. Doubt  or  disbelief  of  their  truth  and  validity 
is  a  wilful  rejection  of  the  light  of  self -evidence,  and 
begs  the  question  in  favour  of  scepticism. 

This  is  all  the  more  manifest  inasmuch  as  agnos- 
ticism itself  has  to  assume  and  make  use  of  them  in 
order  to  vindicate  its  rejection  of  them.  No  other- 
wise can  it  justify  its  doubt  or  disbelief  of  truth  or 
knowledge.  But  it  thus  places  itself  in  a  most  equiv- 
ocal and  inconsistent  position  relatively  alike  to  truth, 
knowledge,  and  the  laws  of  reason. 

It  need  not  deny  that  truth  exists.  It  may  or  may 
not  admit  that  there  is  truth.  But  it  must  deny  or 
question  that  truth  can  be  found,  and  yet  must  also 
claim  to  be  itself  true,  and  truly  established. 

It  cannot  admit  that  there  is  knowledge  j  for  knowl- 
edge even  of  a  phenomenon  is  not  itself  phenomenal, 
and  so-called  subjective  certainty  is  mere  feeling. 
Wherever  there  is  knowledge  mere  feeling  and  sub- 
jectivity are  transcended.  Knowledge  implies  judg- 
ment, but  the  judgment  that  everything  is  or  is  not, 
or  that  it  is  doubtful  whether  it  is  or  is  not,  a  phe- 
nomenon as  contradistinguished  from  a  reality,  is  not 
itself  given  as  a  phenomenon.  What  agnosticism 
really  asks  us  to  accept,  therefore,  is  not  the  simply 

276 


REJECTION   OF  LAWS   OF  THOUGHT 

phenomenal,  but  a  system  of  judgments  regarding 
phenomena.  But  that  it  can  only  do  on  the  ground 
of  knowledge,  notwithstanding  its  denial  of  the  pos- 
sibility of  knowledge. 

It  must,  further,  refuse  to  accept  even  the  necessary 
laws  of  thought  as  true,  or  to  admit  that  anything 
really  is  what  it  necessarily  appears  in  thought  to  be ; 
for  not  to  do  so  would  be  the  retractation  of  all  that  is 
distinctive  of  it.  And  yet  it  is  only  by  availing  it- 
self of  those  laws  that  it  can  give  any  plausibility  to 
its  own  reasonings.  The  reasoning  of  the  agnostic  is 
as  dependent  as  the  reasoning  of  other  men  on  the 
existence  and  validity  of  the  necessary  principles  of 
thought.  In  setting  those  principles  aside,  therefore, 
he  as  thoroughly  refutes  his  own  conclusions  as  those 
of  his  opponents, — or  rather  more  so,  for  his  oppo- 
nents do  not  admit  that  he  is  entitled  to  discard  first 
principles.  If  he  cannot  show  that  he  is  warranted 
to  do  that,  his  explicit  refutation  of  others  is  the  part 
of  his  procedure  in  which  he  fails,  and  his  implicit 
refutation  of  himself  the  part  of  it  in  which  he  suc- 
ceeds. He  does  not  accomplish  what  he  wishes,  and 
does  accomplish  what  he  does  not  wish. 

It  has  always  been  the  boast  of  the  absolute  philo- 
sophical sceptic  that  no  opponent  can  refute  him.  It 
is  so  far  true.  There  can  be  no  direct  demonstrative 
contradiction  of  a  scepticism  which  is  content  to  jus- 
tify universal  doubt  simply  by  the  possibility  of  such 
doubt.  Whatever  answers  be  given  to  it,  whatever 
reasons  be  urged  against  it,  must  fall  under  what  it 
questions,  seeing  that  it  refuses  to  acknowledge  the 

277 


COMPLETE   OR  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICLSM 

truth  of  the  conditions  on  which  all  intelligence  and 
inference  depend.  All  thought  must  rest  on  first 
principles — on  truths  which  have  their  evidence  in 
themselves,  and  which,  in  order  to  be  believed,  re- 
quire only  to  be  apprehended.  If  a  man  deny  them, 
you  cannot  deductively  prove  them  to  him,  nor  can 
you  prove  anything  to  him,  for  they  are  the  conditions 
of  all  rational  and  sane  thinking.  If,  when  you  ap- 
peal to  one  of  those  truths,  a  man,  without  endeavour- 
ing to  show  that  it  is  intrinsically  untrue  or  doubtful, 
simply  says,  "  I  do  not  choose  to  admit  it,"  "  I  find  it 
possible  to  reject  it,  and  therefore  I  reject  it,"  there 
is  no  further  argument  possible  between  you  and  him 
in  the  direct  line.  But  can  the  agnostic  fairly  claim 
this  as  a  triumph  ?  Assuredly  not.  It  merely  means 
that  rather  than  be  considered  a  bad  reasoner,  he  is 
willing  to  accept  an  absurd  premiss  ;  that,  in  order  to 
justify  an  argument  which  implies  the  falsity  of  a 
self-evident  principle,  he  will  not  hesitate  to  adopt 
the  falsity  as  a  truth.  But  every  alleged  logical  vic- 
tory of  this  kind  must  be  deemed  a  real  rational  defeat 
by  every  truly  reasonable  mind.  It  is  the  triumph 
of  will  over  reason,  the  substitution  of  will  for 
reason. 

Assent  to  first  principles  is  not,  as  the  agnostic 
would  have  us  suppose,  mere  belief  or  blifid  trust.  It 
is  an  acceptance  of  self -evidence,  just  and  rational  in 
itself,  and  capable  of  being  corroborated  by  legitimate 
and  adequate  criteria.  In  withholding  it,  the  abso- 
lute agnostic,  the  genuine  and  thorough  sceptic,  de- 
mands to  be  directly  refuted,  which  is  absurd,  but 

278 


RELATION   TO  PEACTICAL  LIFE 

makes  no  attempt  directly  to  justify  himself,  although 
that  is  greatly  needed.  What  he  opposes  to  self-evi- 
dence is  self-will.  What  he  opposes  to  intuitive 
rational  insight  is  intellectual  caprice.  He  decides 
against  reason  ah  initio  without  reason.  In  a  word, 
his  rejection  of  the  laws  of  thought  is  an  essentially 
arbitrary,  irrational  act. 

VI.  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM  AND  PRACTICAL  LIFE 

"  By  their  fruits  ye  shall  know  them  "  is  an  axiom 
which  holds  good  of  propositions  and  theories  as  well 
as  of  things  and  persons.  All  truths  tend  to  good, 
and  all  errors  to  evil.  A  theory  or  system  which 
cannot  be  acted  on  is  one  which  is  greatly  to  be  dis- 
trusted. How  stands  it  in  this  respect  with  agnosti- 
cism ?  Can  it  be  made  to  harmonise  with  the  require- 
ments of  practical  life,  or  with  the  nature  of  man  as  a 
being  formed  for  action  ?  The  answer  must  be  in  the 
negative.  Agnosticism  is  not  a  system  which  will 
work.  Its  relation  to  practice  is  unnatural  and  un- 
satisfactory, and  it  is  inconsistent  with  any  accepta- 
ble theory  of  duty  and  conduct; 

Both  our  physical  and  moral  life  have  imperative 
practical  requirements  with  which  every  consistently 
and  completely  agnostic  theory,  either  of  doubt  or 
disbelief,  must  inevitably  come  into  conflict.  Man  is 
born  to  act,  and  must  act  on  pain  of  death.  In  act- 
ing he  comes  under  obligations  which  he  must  fulfil, 
otherwise  conscience  will  pronounce  him  deserving 
of  contempt  and  punishment.      With  this  state  of 

279 


COMPLETE  OR  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

things,  neither  absolute  disbelief  nor  absolute  doubt 
can  be  got  to  accord.  If  there  be  no  truth,  there  can 
be  no  moral  truth.  If  reason  be  untrustworthy,  its 
ethical  decisions  can  have  no  claim  to  be  trusted.  If 
we  have  no  right  to  believe,  we  can  have  no  ground  to 
act.  If  total  suspension  of  judgment  be  the  proper 
rule  of  intelligence,  total  cessation  from  action  must 
be  the  proper  rule  of  will.  Here  agnosticism  seems 
in  presence  of  an  insuperable  difficulty,  and  certainly 
of  one  which  has  never  been  surmounted. 

Some  have  evaded  it  by  saying  that  man  was  so 
self -contradictory  a  being  that  this  additional  contra- 
diction need  not  be  taken  into  account,  or  should  be 
credited  to  human  nature  instead  of  charged  against 
the  agnostic  representation  of  that  nature.  This  may 
pass  as  a  joke,  but  it  cannot  be  allowed  as  an  argu- 
ment. Any  view  of  the  human  intellect  which  exhib- 
its it  as  essentially  self-contradictory  is  already,  ipso 
facto,  highly  suspicious ;  but  all  suspicions  against  it 
receive  strong  confirmation  when  it  is  seen  to  be  in 
opposition  also  to  the  implications  of  instinct  and 
appetite,  of  affection  and  duty,  and  to  be,  in  fact,  such 
as  would  paralyse  the  entire  emotive  and  active  nat- 
ure, from  its  lowest  physical  prompting  to  its  highest 
spiritual  aspiration. 

There  are  others  who  have,  in  substance,  said: 
Adhere  to  agnosticism  as  a  theory,  but  do  as  others 
do  in  practice.  Conform  to  common  thought  and  the 
ordinary  modes  of  life  as  regards  conduct,  follow  the 
promptings  of  nature,  listen  to  what  sounds  as  the 
voice  of  duty,  while  sceptical  as  to  the  grounds  and 

280 


NOT  KEASONABLE  IN  PRACTICE 

worth  of  human  judgments.  Doubt  or  disbelieve  all 
that  is  received  by  human  beings  as  true  and  certain, 
yet  be  as  prompt  as  others  to  decide  and  as  energetic 
to  execute  when  action  is  required.  That  means, 
however,  that  the  best  thing  which  an  agnostic  can  do 
is  to  act  as  if  agnosticism  were  not  true.  And,  in 
fact,  the  shrewdest  and  most  ingenuous  of  agnostics 
have  confessed  that  they  did  so,  and  could  not  help 
doing  so,  in  regard  to  the  affairs  of  common  life.  But 
why,  then,  suppose  that  their  theory  can  be  acted  on 
at  all  ?  If  they  cannot  act  on  it  as  regards  ordinary 
things,  how  can  they  assume  that  it  may  be  acted  on 
as  regards  higher  things  ?  If  a  theory  which  pre- 
tends to  be  universal  will  plainly  not  apply — not  work 
— in  one  sphere,  is  it  not  likely  to  be  equally  at  fault 
in  others  ?  Is  not  the  proper  inference  that  it  will 
work  nowhere;  that  as  regards  action  or  conduct  it 
completely  breaks  down;  that  it  is  to  be  trusted 
neither  as  to  our  lower  nor  higher  life — neither  as  to 
this  world  nor  any  other  ?  Yet  is  it  credible  that 
thought  should  be  so  related  (or  unrelated)  to  action, 
truth  to  life  ? 

There  are  agnostics  who  have  dealt  with  the  diffi- 
culty in  question  in  still  another  way.  They  have 
entirely  separated  theory  and  conduct,  so  divided  rea- 
son as  to  destroy  its  unity,  and  formed,  instead  of  one 
homogeneous  and  harmonious  philosophical  doctrine, 
two  heterogeneous  and  discordant  ones — the  one  spec- 
ulative and  sceptical,  the  other  practical  and  dog- 
matic. Could  this  procedure  be  justified,  no  further 
proof  would  be  needed  of  the  constitutional  self-oon- 

281 


COMPLETE   OR  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

tradictoriness  of  the  human  intellect.  But  no  evi- 
dence is  to  be  found  for  such  dualism  as  is  alleged,  or 
warrant  for  such  "  double  book-keeping  "  as  is  adopt- 
ed. The  agnostics  referred  to  have  seen  that  they 
must  sacrifice  either  their  agnosticism  to  morality,  or 
morality  to  their  agnosticism ;  and  their  reverence  for 
morality  has  been  sufficiently  strong  to  induce  them 
to  choose  the  former  course  as  the  lesser  evil.  They 
have  thus  made  in  favour  of  morality  the  greatest  sac- 
rifice which,  as  philosophers,  they  could  make — the 
sacrifice  of  their  philosophical  principles  and  consist- 
ency. The  moralist  may  commend  them  in  conse- 
quence, but  the  approval  of  the  logician  cannot  be 
expected. 

Absolute  agnosticism,  then,  owing  to  its  intrinsic 
self-contradictoriness,  has  among  other  defects  that  of 
logically  necessitating  either  a  tremendous  intellect- 
ual or  a  tremendous  ethical  sacrifice,  or  both.  It 
must  be  inconsistent  either  with  reason  or  duty,  or 
both.  The  nearer  it  approaches  to  absoluteness,  or 
essential  universality  and  completeness,  the  more  cer- 
tainly will  it  show  itself  incompatible  with  either  true 
science  or  right  practice. 

As  I  am  at  present  dealing  merely  with  absolute 
agnosticism,  to  have  indicated  in  this  general  way 
that  it  affects  the  latter  as  well  as  the  former  may 
be,  perhaps,  all  that  is  here  strictly  required.  Yet 
it  can  hardly  be  irrelevant  also  to  refer  in  a  few 
sentences  to  the  agnosticism  which  is  specially  direct- 
ed against  knowledge  and  certitude  in  morals. 

There  is  such  an  agnosticism.  Morality  has  never 
282 


AGNOSTICISM  AND   DUTY 

had  any  exceptional  immunity  from  the  assaults  of 
sceptical  criticism ;  nor  is  it  likely  ever  to  have  it. 
The  highest  truth  accessible  to  the  human  intellect  is 
just  the  truth  most  in  danger  of  being  suspected  and 
rejected  by  it.  The  impressions  of  sense  find,  as  a 
rule,  a  readier  assent  than  the  dictates  of  conscience. 
When  Kant  assumed  the  moral  imperative  to  be  a 
limit  v^^hich  even  a  criticism  that  disregarded  every 
other  might  be  expected  to  recognise,  he  made  the 
mistake  of  judging  of  others  by  what  he  was  himself. 
He  credited  mankind,  that  is  to  say,  with  such  a  sense 
of  the  sacredness  of  duty  as  is  possessed  only  by  a  few. 
And  he  forgot  the  teaching  of  experience  transmitted 
to  us  by  history;  overlooked  the  historical  fact  that 
the  agnosticism  which  questions  the  reality  of  moral 
distinctions  is  as  old,  and  has  been  as  prevalent,  as 
that  which  throws  doubt  on  the  existence  of  external 
things,  or  any  other  form  of  scepticism. 

Long  before  the  Christian  era  there  were  agnostics 
who  traced  all  moral  beliefs  to  non-rational  causes. 
The  sophists  and  sceptics  of  ancient  Greece — a  Gor- 
gias  and  Protagoras,  Arcesilaos  and  Carneades,  ^ne- 
sidemus  and  Agrippa,  for  example — were  wont  to 
expatiate  on  the  diversity,  conflict,  and  arbitrariness 
of  those  beliefs,  and  of  the  customs,  laws,  and  institu- 
tions to  which  they  had  given  rise,  and  on  the  impossi- 
bility of  finding  for  them  any  fixed  standard  or  sure 
criterion.  The  same  must  be  said  of  the  succession 
of  sceptical  thinkers  from  Montaigne  to  Hume.  And 
agnostic  attacks  on  the  cognoscibility  of  aught  real 
and  regulative  in  morality  have,  perhaps,  never  been 

283 


COMPLETE  OR  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

more  numerous  and  varied  than  in  recent  times.  In- 
dividualism, positivism,  naturalism,  sensationalism, 
pantheism,  pessimism,  and  anarchism  have  all  been 
prevalent  during  the  latter  half  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  have  all  shown  agnostic  tendencies,  and  have 
all  supplied  agnosticism  with  keenly  sceptical  assail- 
ants of  the  very  bases  of  a  real  or  credible  ethics.  The 
history  of  philosophy  leaves  us  in  no  doubt  at  all  that 
agnosticism  as  to  morality  is  not  only  possible  but 
may  assume  many  and  plausible  forms.  The  idea  of 
duty  on  which  all  morality  rests,  is  as  capable  of 
being  impugned  as  the  idea  of  God,  on  which  all 
religion  rests. 

Wherever  a  real  agnosticism  finds  entrance  ethical 
agnosticism  may  be  expected  to  follow.  A  sincere 
agnosticism  must  tend  towards  completeness.  Hence 
it  will  naturally  and  necessarily  invade  and  seek  to 
make  its  own  the  sphere  of  morality.  And  it  will  be 
especially  difficult  to  prevent  its  succeeding  if  it  be  to 
any  considerable  extent  of  an  anti-religious  character, 
seeing  that  the  connection  between  religious  and  mor- 
al faith,  religious  and  moral  character  and  conduct, 
is  especially  close  and  strong.  Agnosticism  as  to  the 
bases  of  either  religion  or  morals  cannot  fail  to  spread 
and  intensify  agnosticism  as  to  those  of  the  other. 
There  is,  of  course,  no  species  of  agnosticism  so  harm- 
ful as  that  which  undermines  moral  principles  and 
weakens  and  vitiates  moral  practice.  But  all  agnos- 
ticism contributes,  and  anti-religious  agnosticism  es- 
pecially, to  feed  and  foster  that  form  of  it.  Hence  all 
agnosticism,  and  especially  anti-religious  agnosticism, 

284 


ETHICALLY  UNSATISFACTORY 

may  fairly  be  held  to  tend  to  the  demoralisation  of 
individuals  and  of  societies. 

For  a  man  like  Kant  or  Fichte,  in  whom  the  voice 
of  conscience  sounds  clearly  as  the  very  voice  of  God, 
the  moral  law  may  not  unnaturally  seem  as  the  strong- 
est and  surest,  or  even  as  the  sole  yet  sufficient,  barrier 
to  sceptical  doubt  or  denial  of  objective  existence. 
It  is  not  so  inexplicable  as  is  commonly  supposed 
that  Kant,  after  he  had  laboriously  sought  to  show 
that  the  speculative  use  of  reason  only  leads  us  stage 
after  stage,  through  its  forms,  categories,  and  ideas, 
deeper  and  deeper  into  subjectivity  and  illusion, 
could  yet  fancy  that  the  practical  reason  was  sufficient 
to  secure  us  a  foothold  on  eternal  reality.  For  by 
men  like  Kant  the  moral  law  is  vividly  realised  as 
standing  in  far  closer  relationship  to  their  very  selves 
than  the  outward  world  does,  and  at  the  same  time  in 
a  far  more  independent  relationship.  The  world  of 
the  senses  is  to  so  large  an  extent  what  it  is  owing  to 
the  constitution  of  the  senses  that  it  is  comparatively 
easy  for  them  to  regard  it  as  wholly  a  creation  of  the 
mind.  The  moral  law,  on  the  other  hand,  presents 
itself  to  them  as  beneath  and  beyond  sense,  indepen- 
dent of  and  above  them,  universal  and  eternal,  immut- 
able and  divine. 

But  will  the  generality  of  men,  or  even  of  philos- 
ophers, be  so  impressed  ?  Experience  and  history 
clearly  teach  us  that  they  will  not.  Convince  them 
that  their  faculties  are  deceptive,  and  that  the  objects 
of  sense  and  the  contents  of  the  positive  sciences  are 
only  subjective  appearances  and  their  ideal  connec- 

285 


COMPLETE   OK  ABSOLUTE  AGNOSTICISM 

tions,  and  hopeless  must  it  be  to  try  to  persuade  them 
that  the  categorical  imperative  is  an  absolute  reality 
and  a  law  binding  on  all  intelligences.  Ordinary 
liumanity  will  only  regard  moral  judgments  and  be- 
liefs as  on  a  level,  so  far  as  truth  and  certainty  are 
concerned,  with  other  kinds  of  judgments  and  beliefs. 
Bring  men  to  think  that  there  is  no  objective  truth 
outside  of  the  region  of  morals,  and,  as  a  rule,  what 
they  will  conclude  is  not  that  there  is  such  truth 
there,  but  that  there  is  such  truth  nowhere ;  that  so- 
called  moral  knowledge  must  be  as  deceptive  as  all 
else  that  is  called  knowledge,  and  morality  itself  of 
no  exceptional  validity. 

Agnosticism,  then,  is  ethically  as  well  as  intellect- 
ually unsatisfactory.  It  cannot  be  reasonably  ex- 
pected to  yield  good  fruits;  to  enlighten  and  guide 
practice;  to  invigorate,  purify,  or  ennoble  life.  On 
the  contrary,  it  tends  to  weaken  and  destroy  all  trust, 
even  in  the  foundations  of  virtue  and  duty,  and  to 
produce  and  diffuse  that  sort  of  doubt  and  disbelief 
of  which  the  inevitable  issues  are  despair  and  desola- 
tion. A  soul  from  which  all  moral  faith  has  gone  is, 
indeed,  a  soul  that  has  lost  all  true  good,  and  is  itself 
a  lost  soul. 

"  As  music  and  splendour 

Survive  not  the  lamp  and  the  lute, 
The  heart's  echoes  render 

No  song  when  the  spirit  is  mute  : — 
No  song  but  sad  dirges 

Like  the  wind  in  a  ruined  cell, 
Or  the  mournful  surges 
That  ring  the  dead  seaman's  knell." 

— Shelley's  "  Adonais." 
286 


CHAPTEE  VI 

ON     MITIGATED     AND     PARTIAL     AGNOSTICISM 
AND   THEIR   FORMS 

Absolute  agnosticism  may  be  verbally  professed,  but 
is  not  really  credible,  and  cannot  be  consistently  pre- 
sented or  logically  defended.  A  universal  suspension 
of  judgment  or  entire  negation  of  knowledge  is  not 
only  a  false  but  an  unattainable  ideal.  Its  realisation 
would  be  the  extinction  of  intelligence.  Some  de- 
gree of  faith  in  and  knowledge  of  truth  is  as  necessary 
to  the  mind  as  some  measure  of  breath  and  air  to  the 
body.  Reason  can  no  more  be  sustained  and  exer- 
cised in  a  vacuum  than  can  any  of  the  other  powers 
of  life.  Hence  agnosticism  has  never  been  able  to 
present  itself  in  a  pure  and  full  form.  Absolute  ag- 
nosticism has  not  attained  to  actual  existence.  His- 
tory shows  us  only  more  or  less  close  approximations 
and  more  or  less  ingenious  counterfeits  of  it.  All 
known  types  or  schemes  of  agnosticism  have  been 
either  incomplete  as  to  nature  or  extension  or  as  to 
both  nature  and  extension ;  in  other  words,  all  agnos- 
ticism has  been  either  of  what  may  be  called  a  miti- 
gated or  a  partial  kind  or  both  mitigated  and  partial. 
That  fact,  however,  raises  the  very  important 
questions,  Can  agnosticism  be  either  mitigated  or  lim- 
ited in  a  legitimate  and  satisfactory  manner  ?     Has 

287 


MITIGATED    AJ^D    PARTIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

it  ever  been  so  mitigated  and  limited  ?  They  cannot 
be  here  quite  passed  over.  That  agnostics  themselves 
so  frequently  ignore  them  makes  it  only  the  more 
necessary  that  non-agnostics  should  not,  especially  as 
any  critical  survey  of  the  historic  forms  of  agnosti- 
cism soon  shows  that  both  the  mitigation  and  limita- 
tion have  always  been  fruitless  so  far  as  concerned 
their  main  object,  and  that  it  is  vain  to  endeavour  to 
rationalise  the  irrational. 


I.   MITIGATED  AGNOSTICISM.       ITS  UNDEELTHSTG 
ASSUMPTIONS 

Mitigated  agnosticism  is  invariably  scepticism 
modified  by  a  dogmatism  in  which  agnostics  are  of  all 
men  the  least  entitled  to  indulge.  Only  through  a 
surreptitious  commingling  of  scepticism  with  dogma- 
tism can  any  form  of  mitigated  agnosticism  be  mdde 
to  assume  an  appearance  of  plausibility.  Continuous 
self-contradiction  is  accordingly  its  inevitable  and 
predominant  characteristic.  That  characteristic,  in- 
deed, is  what  distinguishes  it  from  the  consciousness, 
however  vivid,  of  the  necessary  imperfection  of  hu- 
man knowledge.  The  latter,  a  due  sense  of  one's  ig- 
norance, is  not  only  a  quite  legitimate  but  a  habitual- 
ly appropriate  frame  of  mind  for  all  mankind.  N^o 
man  knows  anything  completely — knows  anything  in 
its  whole  nature  and  in  all  its  relations.  A  perfect 
knowledge  of  any  object,  however  simple  and  small, 
is  only  possible  on  the  presupposition  of  a  perfect 
knowledge  of  the  omne  scibile, — of  all  truth  and  of 

288 


ASSUMPTIONS  OF  MITIGATED  AGNOSTICISM 

all  reality, — of  God,  the  universe,  and  man, — such 
knowledge  as  can  belong  to  God  alone.  The  wiser  a 
nian  is  the  more  likely  will  he  be  to  feel  that  he  knows 
so  little,  and  that  little  so  superficially, — that  any 
knowledge  he  may  be  credited  with  is  not  only  noth- 
ing to  boast  of  but  hardly  worthy  of  the  name  of 
knowledge.  The  words  of  Socrates,  "  I  know  noth- 
ing, except  that  I  know  nothing,"  and  those  of  St. 
Paul,  "  If  any  man  think  that  he  knoweth  anything, 
he  knoweth  nothing  yet  as  he  ought  to  know,"  bore  in 
them  no  agnostic  or  sceptical  meaning,  but  were  sim- 
ply somewhat  paradoxical,  yet  apt  and  effective  ex- 
pressions, of  what  Socrates  and  St.  Paul  felt  as  to  the 
littleness  and  defects  of  their  own  knowledge  and  of 
all  creaturely  intelligence.  If  treated  as  strictly  and 
speculatively  true  they  are  thoroughly  sceptical  for- 
mula?, and  also  thoroughly  dogmatic  formulas.  To 
affirm  one's  entire  nescience,  to  declare  that  one  knows 
that  one  knows  nothing^  is  to  attribute  to  one's  self 
a  very  marvellous  knowledge  of  a  very  marvellous 
ignorance — a  kind  of  omniscient  nescience  of  all  one's 
objects  of  sense,  data  of  consciousness,  beliefs,  intui- 
tions, and  inferences.  It  is  to  propound  in  a  single 
sentence  an  incredible  dogmatism  and  an  equally 
incredible  scepticism. 

An  analysis  and  critical  examination  of  all  the 
forms  of  mitigated  agnosticism  which  have  appeared 
in  the  course  of  the  history  of  philosophy  would  be 
required  in  order  completely  to  prove  its  mitigation 
to  have  been  always  effected  through  the  illegitimate 
combination  of  dogmatism  with  scepticism, — through 

289 


MITIGATED    AND    PARTIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

'  • 

implicit  assumptions  of  the  attainment  of  knowledge 
in  order  to  justify  explicit  doubts  or  denials  of  its 
attainability.  But  manifestly  I  must  be  content  with 
much  less  than  full  proof.  I  shall  merely  try  to  in- 
dicate how  my  readers  may  obtain  such  proof  for 
themselves. 

Both  the  merits  and  defects  of  agnosticism,  of 
course,  show  themselves  in  its  history.  But  it  is  only 
with  its  defects  that  we  are  now  concerned,  and  in- 
deed only  with  such  defects  as  are  so  inherent  in  it 
and  characteristic  of  it  as  to  appear  in  every  stage  of 
its  history.  Although  those  defects,  however,  may  be 
found  wherever  agnosticism  is  to  be  found,  it  seems 
desirable  to  seek  and  take  note  of  them  as  near  to  the 
rise  of  agnosticism  as  possible.  But  it  was  in  Greece 
that  agnosticism,  under  the  name  of  scepticism,  first 
appeared  in  distinct  forms.  In  the  oriental  world 
it  was  only  enveloped  and  involved  in  ontological  and 
theological  creeds.  Let  us  turn  our  eyes  therefore  to 
ancient  Greek  scepticism.  In  its  oldest  forms  we 
may  easily  trace  all  the  root-errors  of  the  most  mod- 
ern English,  French,  and  German  agnosticism. 

The  doubts  and  questionings  of  the  Pyrrhonians, 
as  the  earliest  Greek  sectarians  of  scepticism  were 
called,  seem  to  have  been  bold,  radical,  and  wide- 
reaching.  Yet  their  teaching  was  largely  modified 
by  manifestly  dogmatic  assumptions,  and  largely  de- 
pendent on  them  for  what  plausibility  it  possessed. 
This  can  be  easily  shown  by  a  brief  and  summary 
statement  of  what  they  were. 

1.  The  Pyrrhonians,  then,  did  not  doubt  or  dis- 
290 


PYERHONISM 

believe  that  human  life  had  a  chief  end ;  that  that 
end  could  be  known;  that  they  themselves  knew 
what  it  was;  and  that  they  also  knew  how  it  was  to 
be  attained.  On  the  contrary,  they  thought  and  acted 
•as  if  those  four  closely  connected  yet  distinguishable 
assumptions  were  positive  and  reliable  facts.  It  was 
owing  to  their  faith  in  them  that  they  advised  their 
contemporaries  not  to  trouble  themselves  in  the  vain 
search  of  what  they  held  to  be  unattainable, — ^knowl- 
edge and  truth.  Pyrrhonism  was  professedly  a  prac- 
tical philosophy, — one  which  undertook  to  guide  men 
to  the  possession  of  the  chief  good,  the  highest  satis- 
faction of  their  nature.  Yet  it  was  also  a  reasoned 
refusal  to  allow  that  knowledge  was  attainable.  The 
self-contradiction  is  obvious.  The  assumptive  and 
positive  portion  of  Pyrrhonian  teaching  was  clearly 
inconsistent  with  the  sceptical  and  negative  portion 
of  it,  and  with  the  maintenance  of  a  philosophy  of 
doubt  or  nescience.  How  could,  how  did,  such  self- 
contradiction  originate  ?  Largely  at  least  from  a 
crude  and  erroneous  belief  that  knowing  and  doing, 
true  thought  and  right  practice,  are  separable  in  a 
way  and  to  an  extent  altogether  incompatible  with  the 
spiritual  unity  of  the  human  mind  and  of  human 
life.  The  mind  is  indivisible  into  contrasted  or  un- 
connected departments,  and  its  life  is  a  process  in 
which  all  its  energies  and  activities  are  combined  with 
a  view  to  co-operation.  Knowing  is  itself  a  kind  of 
doing.  The  doing  which  is  without  knowing  is  auto- 
matic, mechanical,  or  instinctive  action,  not  properly 
human  action.     Intellectual  activity  is  sustained  by 

291 


MITIGATED   AND   PAKTIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

volitional  energy,  and  volitional  energy  is  guided  by 
intellectual  illumination.  Knowledge,  as  Bacon  says, 
is  power.  Neither  physical  nor  moral  ends  can  be 
attained  when  causes,  conditions,  and  laws  are  ig- 
nored. What  is  man's  chief  good  is  itself  a  question 
for  enlightened  reason  to  answer,  and  even  a  difficult 
question  which  admits  of  and  has  received  many  and 
conflicting  answers.  If  we  do  not  know  what  is  true 
how  can  we  know  what  is  good,  and  still  more  what  is 
best  ?  If  all  else  be  doubtful,  what  right  can  we  have 
to  assume  anything  ethical  to  be  certain  ? 

The  same  kind  of  assumptiveness  and  self-contra- 
dictoriness  which  has  thus  been  referred  to  as  charac- 
teristic of  Pyrrhonism  has  constantly  reap}3eared  in 
the  subsequent  history  of  scepticism.  The  scepti- 
cism of  the  Academics  and  Empiricists  of  ancient 
Greece  is  marked  by  a  similarly  unnatural  severance 
of  knowledge  and  practice  as  that  of  the  Pyrrhonians, 
although  the  Academics  introduced  probability  and 
the  Empiricists  experience  with  a  view  to  bridge  over 
the  chasm  and  to  present  some  appearance  of  rational 
basis  for  conduct.  The  N^eo-Sceptics  of  Greece,  on 
the  other  hand,  preferred  to  build  on  the  original 
Pyrrhonian  basis.  The  majority  of  the  avowed  scep- 
tics of  modern  times  to  whom  I  have  referred  in  chap, 
iii.  were  generally  called  Pyrrhonians,  and  did  not 
regard  themselves  as  wronged  by  being  so  called. 
Ritschlian  divines  separate  religion  from  knowledge 
in  much  the  same  way  as  Pyrrhonian  sceptics  sepa- 
rated the  conduct  of  life  from  knowledge.  Their  rep- 
resentation of  religion  as  dependent  only  on  judg- 

293 


INCONSISTENCY   OF   PYERHONISM 

ments  of  value,  and  independent  of  any  knowledge  of 
objective  reality  or  of  relationships  which  can  be  ex- 
pressed in  existential  or  theoretical  judgments,  is 
assuredly  Pyrrhonianism  in  theology. 

2.  There  were  other  assumptions  involved  in  the 
Pyrrhonian  demand  for  suspension  of  judgment.  For 
instance,  Pyrrhonians  did  not  doubt  of  knowing  phe- 
nomena, but  held  that  they  knew  only  phenomena. 
Nor  did  they  doubt  of  knowing  realities,  but  denied 
that  they  knew  them.  Neither  as  to  things  in  them- 
selves nor  as  to  appearances  of  things  was  their  atti- 
tude of  mind  one  of  mere  suspension  of  judgment  or 
of  pure  doubt.  On  the  contrary,  as  to  the  former,  it 
was  one  of  negation,  denial  of  the  knowledge  or 
knowability  of  things  themselves ;  and  as  to  the  latter, 
one  of  affirmation,  of  belief  that  appearances  only  are 
known.  Thus  the  Pyrrhonian  doubt  had  reference 
merely  to  the  existence  and  nature  of  things  in  them- 
selves, of  realities  which  do  not  appear.  But  on  what 
did  such  doubt  itself  rest  ?  Was  it  on  either  a  scepti- 
cal or  a  rational  judgment  ?  Manifestly  not,  but  on 
the  dogmatic  and  absurd  assumption  that  realities  and 
phenomena,  things  and  appearances  of  things,  were 
entirely  distinct,  absolutely  separate,  and  known  by 
Pyrrhonians  themselves  to  be  so.  If  things  in  them- 
selves are  things  which  appear,  there  can  be  no  more 
reason  for  doubting  of  things  in  themselves  than  for 
doubting  of  things  which  appear.  And  if  there  be  no 
things  in  themselves,  none  which  do  not  or  may  not 
appear,  doubt  as  to  so-called  "  things  in  themselves  " 
must  be  doubt  about  nothing  at  all — objectless,  mo- 

293 


MITIGATED   AND   PARTIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

tiveless,  reasonless  doubt.  To  doubt  of  realities  while 
believing  in  phenomena  assumes  a  distinction  between 
them,  and  enough  of  knowledge  to  draw  the  distinc- 
tion. There  cannot  be  intelligent  or  even  intelli- 
gible doubt  about  things  altogether  unintelligible, 
such  as  the  Pyrrhonians  pronounced  things  in  them- 
selves to  be. 

It  was  not  Pyrrhonians,  or  sceptics  of  any  kind, 
who  first  represented  the  distinction  between  reality 
and  appearance,  being  and  becoming,  the  noumenal 
and  phenomenal,  as  an  absolute  one.  Like  all  that  is 
distinctive  of  scepticism,  it  sprang  from  the  exclu- 
siveness  and  exaggerations  of  dogmatism.  In  Greece 
it  was  the  conflict  between  the  Eleatics  and  Heracli- 
teans  which  brought  it  into  prominence.  Plato  gives 
it  a  large  place  in  his  teaching,  and  threw  such  a  glory 
and  a  charm  over  it  as  to  secure  for  it  a  remarkable 
history  even  far  beyond  the  confines  of  scepticism. 
The  sceptics  have  had  only  to  adopt  and  apply  it  in  a 
special  way.  They  have  done  so  with  the  most  in- 
structive unanimity.  There  is,  perhaps,  no  form  of 
developed  scepticism  which  does  not  depend  on  the 
distinction  in  qviestion  as  one  of  its  chief  supports. 
It  is  one  of  the  main  pillars  of  Kantianism,  and  of  all 
post-Kantian  agnostic  theories.  Even  agnostics,  in- 
deed, seem  now  too  ashamed  of  it  to  venture  to  empha- 
sise or  formulate  it ;  but  they  have  not  had  the  courage 
to  discard  it,  or  been  able  to  show  that  they  can 
dispense  with  it.  Their  sceptical  doubts  and  de- 
nials still  depend  on  it,  and  presuppose  its  intelligi- 
bility and  accuracy.     Mr.  Alfred  Sidgwick,  the  most 

294 


KNOWLEDGE   AND    OPINION 

philosophical  representative  of  scepticism  in  England, 
holds  in  the  present  day  that  reality  cannot  be  known, 
just  owing  to  his  distinguishing  reality  from  appear- 
ance in  the  preposterous  way  which  Pyrrho  did  in 
the  age  of  Alexander  the  Great.  And  such  a  distinc- 
tion !  The  distinction  between  Keality  which  does 
not  and  cannot  appear,  and  Appearance  in  which 
nothing  really  appears.  How  can  any  one  reasonably 
believe  either  in  such  Reality  or  in  such  Appearance  ? 
It  would  seem  as  if  agnostics  must  believe  in  both. 

3.  The  separation  and  contrast  of  reality  and  ap- 
pearance naturally  implied  another  separation  and 
contrast.  Granted  that  reality  and  appearance  were 
so  apart  and  unlike  in  themselves,  they  could  not  be 
united  in  or  alike  to  the  mind — could  not,  for  instance, 
be  equally  objects  of  knowledge.  If  realities  only  be 
known,  appearances  must  be  below  knowledge ;  and  if 
appearances  only  be  known,  realities  must  be  above 
knowledge.  Accordingly,  the  Greek  dogmatists,  who 
dissevered  and  contrasted  reality  and  appearance, 
noumenon  and  phenomenon,  gave  to  the  words  knowl- 
edge and  belief  {eTna-ri^fiTj  and  Bo^a)  the  significations 
required  to  express  the  correspondent  mental  states. 
In  other  words,  they  termed  knowledge  only  what 
they  held  to  be  apprehended  by  pure  reason  and 
demonstratively  certain,  and  called  opinion  all  that 
presented  itself  to  sense,  and  was  consequently  viewed 
by  them  as  in  contact  merely  with  semblance  or  illu- 
sion. The  sciences  which  are  now  calle^i  positive, 
and  which  are  so  often  spoken  of  as  the  only  sciences, 
Plato  and  the  speculative  philosophers  of  antiquity 

295 


MITIGATED   AND    PARTIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

did  not  regard  as  worthy  of  the  name  of  science. 
They  held  all  sense-perceptions  and  ordinary  judg- 
ments to  be  essentially  different  from  true  cognition, 
and  relegated  them  to  the  limbo  of  mere  opinion. 
The  sceptics  accepted  the  same  distinction  between 
knowledge  and  opinion,  but  they  made  another  appli- 
cation of  it,  and  drew  from  it  an  opposite  inference. 
They  concluded  that  knowledge  was  unattainable; 
that  truth,  if  there  be  such  a  thing,  must  be  beyond 
the  reach  of  the  human  mind ;  and  that  men  should 
be  content  to  do  without  them,  making  the  most  of 
such  substitutes  for  them  as  appearances,,  probabili- 
ties, and  experiences,  and  seeking  only  to  gain  prac- 
tical ends. 

The  Greek  sceptics,  however,  who,  from  Pyrrlio  to 
Sextus  Empiricus,  represented  knowledge  as  beyond 
human  reach,  either  did  not  define  knowledge  in  any 
reasonable  way  or  assumed  that  there  was  no  knowl- 
edge short  of  absolute  knowledge,  and  no  valid  proof 
of  any  kind  unless  there  was  some  one  perfectly  clear 
and  unquestionable  criterion  of  truth.  Modern  scep- 
tics have  proceeded  in  the  same  way,  but  it  is  a  mis- 
leading one.  Men  may  have  true  knowledge  witliout 
being  infallible.  It  is  easy  to  show  that  our  senses 
are  often  at  fault.  Their  illusions  and  the  fallacies 
of  inference  associated  with  them  are  innumerable. 
Hence  one  of  the  arguments  on  which  sceptics  have 
placed  the  greatest  reliance.  Yet  all  the  errors  and 
contradictions  which  can  be  fairly  charged  on  the 
judgments  of  sense  are  very  far  from  disproving  that 
all  our  senses  yield  us  a  large  amount  of  real  knowl- 

296 


PYKRHONIAN  USE   OF  REASON 

edge.  The  inference  to  the  contrary  drawn  from 
their  defects  and  errors  is  excessive  and  fallacious. 
The  illusions  and  contradictions  adduced  are  excep- 
tional; and,  further,  they  are  explicable,  and  so  ex- 
plicable as  to  cease  to  have  any  argumentative  value 
against  the  existence  of  truth  and  the  reality  of 
knowledge  whenever  they  are  naturally  accounted  for. 
If  we  can  discover  the  causes  of  either  our  erroneous 
perceptions  or  inferences,  the  scepticism  which  has 
based  itself  on  those  perceptions  or  inferences  is  left 
without  foundation  and  must  fall.  Their  causes  al- 
ways can  be  discovered.  All  that  the  sceptical  argu- 
mentation referred  to  really  proves  is  that  the  search 
for  truth  is  a  serious  affair,  one  which  requires  exer- 
tion, circumspection,  and  method. 

4.  Pyrrhonism  also  assumed  that  there  was  in  man 
a  reason  capable  of  weighing  reasonings  regarding 
things,  and  of  determining  what  weight  ought  to  be 
assigned  to  them.  Pyrrho  himself,  in  order  that  he 
might  overtly  deny  that  man  had  such  a  reason,  re- 
quired to  reason  as  if  he  had  it,  and  thus  also  to  miti- 
gate his  open  scepticism  with  secret  dogmatism.  The 
assumption  was  manifestly  implied  in  his  argument 
that  he  could  neither  legitimately  affirm  nor  deny  the 
reality  of  motion  because  the  reasoning  of  Parmenides 
that  there  is  no  motion,  and  the  reasoning  of  Heracli- 
tus  that  all  is  motion,  being  of  equal  but  contrary 
weight,  balance  and  annul  each  other.  In  order  to  be 
entitled  so  to  infer  that  the  two  opposite  views  were 
supported  with  reasons  of  equal  weight  and  worth  he 
must  have  had  a  power  competent  to  weigh  and  appre- 

297 


MITIGATED   AND    PAETIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

ciate  reasons  aright.  The  assertion  that  reasoning 
yields  contradictory  conclusions  which  are  supported 
by  proofs  of  the  same  cogency  in  reality  presupposes 
its  veracity  and  validity,  although  meant  to  discredit 
it.  Further,  it  is  an  assertion  which  ought  not  to 
be  dogmatically  affirmed,  but  which  requires  to  be 
justified  in  each  and  every  instance.  A  universal 
conclusion  cannot  be  rationally  inferred  from  a  par- 
ticular case.  And  there  is  obviously  a  special  and 
tremendous  improbability  in  supposing  that  reason, 
the  general  validity  of  which  is  implied  in  all  rea- 
soning, will  uniformly  proceed  to  contradict  and 
stulify  itself  in  particulars. 

That  reason  thus  contradicts  and  stultifies  itself 
the  agnostic  has  often  asserted  but  never  proved. 
Pyrrho  obviously  did  no  more  than  give  the  assertion 
a  kind  of  plausibility  by  confounding  this  contradic- 
tions of  one-sided  and  reckless  reasoners  with  the  con- 
tradictions of  reason  itself.  He  had  no  right  to  infer 
because  Parmenides  had  argued  that  there  was  no 
motion  and  Ileraclitus  that  all  was  motion,  and  the 
arguments  of  the  one  seemed  to  him  to  be  just  as  good 
or  just  as  bad  as  the  arguments  of  the  other,  that 
reason  necessarily  falls  into  self-contradiction  when 
applied  to  investigate  the  nature  of  motion.  Grant 
that  the  opposing  arguments  of  Parmenides  and  Iler- 
aclitus are  equal,  and  all  that  can  be  fairly  deduced 
is  that  Parmenides  and  Ileraclitus  contradict  each 
other.  To  conclude  that  therefore  reason  contradicts 
itself  is  a  leap  of  logic  quite  unwarranted.  The  more 
natural  view  is  that  both  Parmenides  and  Heraclitus 

298 


BOTH   SCEPTICISM  AND   DOGMATISM 

have  erred ;  that  they  have  proceeded  from  inadequate 
or  false  conceptions  of  motion ;  that  their  respective 
findings,  "  there  is  no  motion  "  and  "  all  is  motion/' 
are  alike  extravagant ;  that  we  should  be  content  to 
affirm  that  "  there  is  some  motion,"  so  that  the  percep- 
tion of  motion  is  not  a  mere  perception  without  ob- 
ject, but,  under  normal  conditions,  a  real  perception 
of  an  object — i.e.,  the  perception  of  a  real  object.  If 
this  view  be  correct,  reason  must  be  held  to  be  consist- 
ent both  with  itself  and  with  experience,  where  the 
sceptic  most  confidently  ascribes  to  it  self-contradic- 
tion and  unconformity  with  experience. 

Arcesilaos  and  Carneades,  I  must  add,  reasoned  in 
the  same  way  and  with  the  same  intent  as  Pyrrho. 
>iEnesidemus  and  Agrippa  placed  the  argument  from 
the  contrariety  of  judgments  among  the  so-called  scep- 
tical tropes.  Montaigne,  Le  Vayer,  and  Bayle  made 
constant  use  of  it.  It  reappeared  in  Kant's  doctrine 
of  antinomies ;  and  it  is  very  conspicuous  in  the  agnos- 
ticism of  Hamilton,  Mansel,  and  in  various  other 
nineteenth-century  forms  of  scepticism. 

5.  I  shall  mention  yet  another  dogmatic  assump- 
tion in  Pyrrhonism — namely,  the  assumption  that 
such  doubt  as  it  inculcated  would  free  men  from  the 
cares  and  fears  of  life,  and  secure  them  mental  tran- 
quillity. What  warrant  was  there  for  that  assump- 
tion ?  None,  so  far  as  either  reason  or  experience 
shows.  The  great  mass  of  our  cares  and  fears,  our 
pains  and  sorrows,  have  their  sources  not  in  things  in 
themselves,  but  in  what  things  are  or  may  be  to  us; 
not  in  so-called  realities,  unknown  and  unknowable 

299 


MITIGATED   AND    PAETIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

through  experience,  but  in  such  as  do  or  may  appear 
in  the  actual  or  possible  phenomena  of  experience. 
Who  troubles  himself  about  fire  and  water  in  them- 
selves ?  Yet  how  troublesome  may  be  the  fire  which 
bums  and  the  water  which  drowns  ? 

The  preceding  observations  on  Pyrrhonism  may 
suffice  to  show  that,  so  far  from  being  pure,  com- 
plete, absolute  scepticism,  it  was  very  largely  indeed 
a  scepticism  dependent  on  and  made  up  of  dogma- 
tism ;  a  system  mitigated  or  modified  through  the 
mixture  of  sceptical  with  dogmatical  elements,  and 
consequently  one  composed  of  incongruous  and  dis- 
cordant elements.  An  analysis  of  most  other  forms 
of  scepticism  would  show  them  to  be  of  the  same  char- 
acter ;  not  less  full  of  dogmatic  assumptions,  nor  less 
self-contradictory  and  untrue.  I  must  leave,  however, 
my  readers  to  institute  for  themselves  any  further 
analysis  of  the  kind  which  they  may  deem  necessary. 
It  will  now,  I  hope,  be  enough  for  me  at  this  point 
to  consider  how  Hume  has  treated  the  question  of  the 
relation  of  mitigated  to  absolute  agnosticism. 

II.    HUME    ON   MITIGATED   AND    ABSOLUTE   SCEPTICISM 

Hume,  in  the  essay  entitled  "  Of  the  Academical 
or  Sceptical  Philosophy,"  has  clearly  defined  his  atti- 
tude both  to  absolute  and  mitigated  agnosticism  by 
professing  himself  to  be  not  a  Pyrrhonian  but  an 
Academic  sceptic.  Pyrrhonism  was  the  term  he  em- 
ployed to  denote  absolute  scepticism.  It  had  often 
been  so  used  before,  and  has  not  infrequently  been  so 

300 


HUME  ON  PYERHONISM 

used  since.  For  such  use  of  it  there  is,  however,  no 
proper  historical  warrant.  Pyrrhonism,  as  I  have 
already  shown  in  this  chapter,  was  not  absolute  scep- 
ticism. There  is  no  evidence  even  of  its  having  been 
a  nearer  approximation  to  such  scepticism  than  Aca- 
demic scepticism  was.  On  the  contrary,  the  docu- 
mentary testimony  seems  to  prove  that  the  scepticism 
of  the  Pyrrhonists  was  much  less  radical  and  com- 
plete than  that  of  the  Academics.  M.  Brochard  has 
very  plausibly,  and  perhaps  justly,  maintained  that 
the  so-called  "  Pyrrhonian  suspension  of  judgment  " 
was  not  taught  by  Pyrrho,  but  appropriated  by  those 
who  called  themselves  his  disciples,  from  Arcesilaos 
or  Carneades,  who  undoubtedly  inculcated  such  sus- 
pension of  judgment  as  to  knowledge.  The  great 
concern  of  Pyrrho  was  that  men  should  live  conform- 
ably to  the  chief  end  of  life,  and  his  scepticism  seems 
to  have  had  its  source  mainly  in  his  aversion  to  spec- 
ulation and  sophistry  as  incompatible  with  such  a  life. 

In  the  essay  "  Of  the  Academical  or  Sceptical  Phi- 
losophy," Hume  indicates  the  grounds  on  which  the 
absolute  sceptic  challenges  the  worth  of  belief  in  the 
existence  of  an  external  world,  in  the  certainty  of 
mathematical  demonstration,  and  in  moral  evidence, 
and  implies  throughout  that  no  rational  refutation  of 
them  is  to  be  found.  At  the  same  time  he  admits 
that  although  absolute  scepticism  cannot  be  refuted, 
it  will  not,  and  should  not,  be  accepted.  "  Its  prin- 
ciples may  flourish  and  triumph  in  the  schools,  but 
they  must  vanish  like  smoke  in  real  life." 

"  A  Pyrrhonian,"  he  says,  "  cannot  expect  that  his 
301 


MITIGATED   AND    PAETIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

philosophy  will  have  any  constant  influence  on  the 
mind ;  or,  if  it  had,  that  its  influence  would  be  bene- 
ficial to  society.  On  the  contrary,  he  must  acknowl- 
edge, if  he  will  acknowledge  anything,  that  all  human 
life  must  perish,  were  his  principles  universally  and 
steadily  to  prevail.  All  discourse,  all  action,  would 
immediately  cease,  and  men  remain  in  a  total  leth- 
argy till  the  necessities  of  nature,  unsatisfied,  put 
an  end  to  their  miserable  existence.  It  is  true  so 
fatal  an  event  is  very  little  to  be  dreaded.  Nature  is 
always  too  strong  for  principle.  And  though  a 
Pyrrhonian  may  throw  himself  or  others  into  a  mo- 
mentary amazement  and  confusion  by  his  profound 
reasoning,  the  first  and  most  trivial  event  in  life  will 
put  to  flight  all  his  doubts  and  scruples,  and  leave 
him  the  same  in  every  point  of  action  and  speculation 
with  the  philosophers  of  every  other  sect,  or  with 
those  who  never  concerned  themselves  in  any  philo- 
sophical researches.  When  he  wakens  from  his  dream 
he  will  be  the  first  to  join  in  the  laugh  against  him- 
self, and  to  confess  that  all  his  objections  are  mere 
amusement,  and  can  have  no  other  tendency  than  to 
show  the  whimsical  condition  of  mankind,  who  must 
act  and  reason  and  believe ;  though  they  are  not  able, 
by  their  most  diligent  inquiry,  to  satisfy  themselves 
concerning  the  foundation  of  these  oi:>erations,  or  to 
remove  the  objections  which  may  be  raised  against 
them." 

Absolute  scepticism,  then,  according  to  Hume,  is 
excessive,  and  can  be  in  itself  neither  durable  nor 
useful.     It  may,  however,  he  thinks,  in  part  give  rise 

302 


HUME    ON    MITIGATED    SCEPTICISM 

to  two  very  desirable  sjiecies  of  mitigated  scepticism 
— -the  first  being  a  degree  of  doubt  and  caution  and 
modesty  in  all  kinds  of  scrutiny  and  decision,  and  the 
second  being  the  limitation  of  our  inquiries  in  such 
respects  as  are  best  adapted  to  the  natural  capacity  of 
the  human  understanding.  A  tincture  of  universal 
scepticism — a  certain  sense  of  the  universal  perplex- 
ity and  confusion  inherent  in  human  nature — may, 
he  considers,  be  serviceable  in  abating  the  pride  and 
obstinacy  and  self-confidence  of  dogmatists,  and  in 
inducing  men  to  avoid  all  distant  and  high  inquiries, 
and  to  confine  their  judgments  to  common  life,  and 
to  such  objects  as  fall  under  daily  practice  and  expe- 
rience. 

"  Those  who  have  once,"  Hume  says,  "  been  thor- 
oughly convinced  of  the  force  of  the  Pyrrhonian 
doubt,  and  of  the  impossibility  that  anything  but  the 
strong  power  of  natural  instinct  could  free  us  from  it, 
will  never  be  tempted  to  go  beyond  common  life,  so 
long  as  they  consider  the  imperfection  of  those  facul- 
ties which  they  employ,  their  narrow  reach,  and  their 
inaccurate  operations."  Again,  he  asks,  "  While  we 
cannot  give  a  satisfactory  reason  why  we  believe,  after 
a  thousand  experiments,  that  a  stone  will  fall  or  fire 
burn,  can  we  ever  satisfy  ourselves  concerning  any 
determination  which  we  may  form  with  regard  to  the 
origin  of  worlds,  and  the  structure  of  nature,  from 
and  to  eternity  ?  " 

'No  reasoning,  he  then  argues,  except  abstract  rea- 
soning, concerning  quantity  and  number,  and  experi- 
mental   reasoning,    concerning    matter   of   fact    and 

303 


MITIGATED    AND    PAETIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

existence,  can  contain  anything  but  sophistry  and 
illusion, 

Hume's  own  scepticism,  then,  is  professedly  a  mit- 
igated scepticism,  but  one  which  is  so  far  founded  on 
the  absolute  scepticism  which  he  rejects  as  excessive. 
His  rejection  of  absolute  scepticism  is  not  rested  on 
reason,  but  on  instinct,  common-sense,  practical  in- 
credibility. The  absolute  sceptic  is  held  by  him  to 
have  reason,  so  far  as  can  be  made  out,  on  his  side. 
Hume  had,  in  other  words,  according  to  his  own  ex- 
plicit confession  and  declaration,  notliing  to  urge 
against  what  he  calls  excessive  scepticism  but  an  in- 
stinct which  he  alleges  can  be  proved  to  be  irrational, 
and  the  evil  consequences  which  would  flow  from  ad- 
mitting as  true  what  he  holds  cannot  be  shown  to  be 
false. 

If  Dr.  Thomas  Reid- — his  most  effective  Scottish 
opponent — had  merely  appealed  in  refutation  of  such 
scepticism  to  blind  instinct  or  to  common-sense  in  its 
vulgarest  and  not  in  its  philosophical  acceptation,  he 
would  have  met  it  in  the  only  way  in  which  Hume 
met  it,  or  professed  to  think  it  could  be  met.  Of 
course,  Reid  was  not  content  so  to  meet  it.  He  did 
not  believe  that  any  of  the  original  instincts  or  origi- 
nal principles  of  human  nature  could  be  shown  to  be 
contrary  to  reason.  He  held,  and  tried  to  prove,  that 
it  was  only  by  false  reasonings  that  reason  could  be 
represented  as  contradicting  either  itself  or  instinct. 
He  may  or  may  not  have  successfully  maintained  his 
position ;  but  surely  the  position  itself  is  incompara- 
bly superior  to  that  of  Hume,  who  holds  absolute  ag- 

304 


HUME'S   OWN   SCEPTICISM 

nosticism  alone  reasonable,  and  yet  quite  incredible 
— who  acknowledges  that  were  he  faithfully  to  follow 
reason  he  must  be  an  absolute  agnostic,  yet  that,  in 
order  not  to  be  ludicrous,  he  must  yield  to  a  blind  in- 
stinct, or,  in  other  words,  prefer  unreason  to  reason. 
When  a  philosopher  tells  us  that  the  state  of  man  is  a 
condition  thus  "  whimsical,"  we  ought  not  readily  to 
admit  that  he  is  entitled  to  speak  for  any  one  except 
himself.  He,  owing  to  his  agnosticism,  may  be  in 
that  condition,  but  the  "  whimsicality  "  of  his  situa- 
tion may  be  entirely  due  to  the  irrationality  of  his  ag- 
nosticism. That  agnosticism  may  be  a. dream,  and 
he  may  only  have  to  awaken  from  it  to  find  himself 
in  a  world  of  light  and  order,  where  sound  reason  is 
never  at  variance  with  healthy  instinct. 

It  is  further  to  be  observed  that  absolute  scepticism, 
according  to  Hume,  would,  if  accepted,  put  an  end 
to  all  discourse  and  to  all  action.  In  his  opinion,  if 
the  sceptic  were  to  follow  his  reasonings  to  their  legit- 
imate conclusion,  and  then  seriously  to  adopt  that 
conclusion,  he  would  soon  perish.  In  other  words, 
he  held  a  view  directly  opposed  to  that  of  those  who 
maintain  that  even  if  scepticism  were  to  justify  its 
doubts  and  negations,  and  to  get  the  validity  of  its 
arguments  acknowledged,  ordinary  life  would  be  quite 
unaffected.  He  did  not  think  that  a  merely  phenom- 
enal world  would  have  the  same  influence  as  a  real 
world  on  any  one  who  believed  it  to  be  merely  phe- 
nomenal; he  thought  it  could  only  have  the  same 
influence  on  those  who  were  not  thoroughly  awakened 
out  of  their  dream  that  it  was  real.  Those  who  sup- 
pose that  they  hold  his  doctrine,  and  yet  censure  in 

305 


MITIGATED   AND   PARTIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

his  opponents  an  opinion  which  he  so  explicitly  held, 
should  find  in  this  matter  for  reflection.  Are  they 
not  meaning  by  phenomena  realities?  Is  their 
phenomenal  sun,  for  example,  simply  a  mental  im- 
pression, or  a  group  of  such  impressions,  or  an  idea 
derived  therefrom,  or  is  it  not  a  real  body  some  ninety- 
four  millions  of  miles  away  from  them,  and  from 
every  impression  which  it  is  possible  for  them  to 
have  ?  Hume  was  not  so  unwise  as  to  fancy  that  in 
the  view  of  a  consistent  agnosticism  the  mind  can  get 
a  hairsbreadth  beyond  itself.  He  knew  that  it  must 
deny  the  objectivity  of  space,  the  validity  of  causality, 
the  reality  of  substances,  and  that  these  external  phe- 
nomena could  not  be  reasonably  held  to  be  the  equiva- 
lents of  realities,  but  only  of  illusions. 

Hume  represents  absolute  scepticism  as  logically 
and  legitimately  leading  to  the  mitigated  scepticism 
which  he  recommends.  But  in  that  he  obviously  errs. 
Absolute  scepticism  neither  acknowledges  nor  con- 
tains nor  yields  any  measure.  Mitigation  and  limi- 
tation are  contrary  to  its  nature;  it  can  only  be 
mitigated  and  limited  by  being  so  far  successfully 
refuted.  How  can  a  sense  of  the  universal  perplexity 
and  confusion  inherent  in  human  nature  produce 
merely  care  and  caution  and  modesty  in  reasoning? 
Why,  if  the  conviction  involved  in  that  sense  be  cor- 
rect, no  care,  caution,  or  modesty  in  reasoning  can  in 
the  least  secure  that  reasoning  will  reach  truth.  Rea- 
son, according  to  the  absolute  sceptic,  must  necessarily 
fail  to  attain  knowledge;  and,  according  to  Hume 
himself,  must,  even  when  exercised  faultlessly  and  to 

306 


HUME'S   AGNOSTICISM   ABSOLUTE 

the  full,  lead  to  conclusions  which  can  neither  be  be- 
lieved nor  acted  on.  With  true  criticism,  modesty 
and  moderation,  caution  and  carefulness,  must  ever 
be  closely  allied ;  but  they  have  no  natural  connection 
with  the  scepticism  which  teaches  that  reason  is  essen- 
tially unreasonable,  and  that  the  whole  constitution 
and  condition  of  mankind  are  essentially  absurd. 

Nor  can  absolute  scepticism  logically  warrant  the 
limitation  of  reason  to  any  particular  sphere.  Indeed 
it  cannot,  perhaps,  warrant  any  conclusion,  as  it  im- 
plies the  worthlessness  of  logic ;  but  if  any  conclusion 
may  be  inferred  from  it,  it  must  be  not  the  propriety 
of  limiting  but  of  wholly  suppressing  reasoning  and 
research.  If  our  rational  faculty  is  essentially  inca- 
pable of  attaining  truth,  it  will  not  do  to  say  that  we 
must  not  in  the  exercise  of  it  go  beyond  common  life. 
What  we  must  say  is,  let  us  not  employ  it  at  all.  The 
assumption  that  reason  is  valid  in  any  sphere  implies 
that  it  is  not  essentially  incapable  of  attaining  truth, 
and  logically  forbids  our  excluding  it  from  any 
sphere,  until  we  have  proved  it  powerless  within  that 
sphere.  And  such  proof  must  be  furnished  by  reason 
itself  acting  in  accordance  with  its  own  constitutional 
laws. 

We  have  no  right,  so  far  as  reason  and  philosophy 
are  concerned,  to  discourage  curiosity  and  research 
in  any  direction ;  they  miist  be  free  to  turn  to  any 
question.  We  have  a  right  only  to  insist  on  thor- 
oughly testing  their  reports.  Things  remote  from  us 
are  often  more  easily  answered  than  those  which  are 
close  to  us.     It  is  often  only  in  things  very  far  away 

307 


MITIGATED   AND    PARTIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

that  we  find  the  explanation  of  things  near  at  hand. 
We  know  that  a  stone  falls  and  at  what  rate  it  falls, 
but  not  why  it  falls, — we  know,  that  is,  the  fact  of 
gravitation  and  its  law,  but  not  its  cause ;  and  long 
before  we  know  the  why  or  cause  of  gravitation,  fa- 
miliar although  it  be  as  a  fact  and  certain  as  we  are 
of  its  law,  we  may  have  a  scientific  proof  that  the 
present  physical  constitution  of  things  had  an  origin 
at  an  approximately  assignable  date.  Indeed,  some 
of  the  most  eminent  scientists  of  Europe  hold  that 
they  have  already  found  in  Fourier's  theory  of  heat  a 
basis  for  a  strictly  scientific  inference  as  to  the  origin 
of  worlds,  the  very  question  which  Hume  thought  it 
especially  hopeless  to  discuss. 

Absolute  agnosticism,  then,  does  not  lead  to  a  miti- 
gated agnosticism  such  as  Hume  professed  and  recom- 
mended to  others.  His  agnosticism,  however,  logi- 
cally emerges  and  issues  at  all  points  into  absolute 
agnosticism.  To  admit  that  reason  is  on  the  side  of 
absolute  agnosticism  is  to  admit  that  so  long  as  you 
follow  reason  only — that  whenever  you  allow  yourself 
to  yield  to  the  guidance  of  reason  without  bias  or 
caprice — ^you  are  bound  to  be  an  absolute  agnostic. 
It  is  to  grant  that  whenever  you  have  the  sincerity 
and  courage  to  philosophise  with  freedom  and  thor- 
oughness, you  will  not  mitigate,  modify,  or  limit  your 
agnosticism.  And  it  must  be  said,  I  think,  of  Hume, 
that  in  his  philosophising  on  fundamental  questions 
he  was  thus  true  to  himself  by  being  thoroughly  ag- 
nostic. The  agnosticism  at  which  he  arrived  implies 
(as  I  have  endeavoured  to  show  in  chap,  iii.)  that  all 

808 


VARIETIES   OF   AGNOSTICISM 

that  seems  knowledge  of  existence  is  not  really  so; 
that  belief  is  not  essentially  distinct  from  imagina- 
tion; that  substances  are  reducible  to  collections  of 
ideas,  time  and  space  to  subjective  conceptions,  the 
causal  connection  to  habitual  association ;  reason  to 
custom ;  that  science  has  no  principles,  and  religion 
no  satisfactory  grounds.  The  agnosticism  which  goes 
thus  far  ought  to  go  farther.  Any  mitigating  ele- 
ment which  may  be  claimed  to  be  in  it  has  obviously 
no  right  to  be  there,  and  will  but  slightly  alter  its 
general  character  or  affect  its  general  influence. 
Virtually  and  implicitly  such  agnosticism  is  absolute. 

III.    PARTIAL    OE    LIMITED    SCEPTICISM:    ITS    FORMS 
AND   THEIR   INTER-RELATIONS 

Partial  or  limited  agnosticism — agnosticism  in- 
complete as  regards  extension — is  more  prevalent 
than  either  absolute  or  mitigated  agnosticism.  Like 
mitigated  agnosticism  it  always  shows  itself  incapable 
of  justifying  its  own  incompleteness.  The  arguments 
which  it  employs  against  the  species  of  knowledge  and 
certitude  that  it  rejects  are  as  applicable  to  the  spe- 
cies that  it  accepts.  All  its  weapons  may  be  turned 
against  itself.  It  never  clears  itself  of  self-contra- 
diction. 

There  are  various  forms  of  partial  or  limited  agnos- 
ticism, and  they  may  be  distributed  or  classified  in 
more  ways  than  one.  '  I  must  distribute  them  with  a 
view  to  the  work  I  have  in  hand,  a  treatment  of  agnos- 
ticism in  relation  to  religion.     It  is  with  the  agnosti- 

309 


MITIGATED   AND   PARTIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

eism  which  directly  refers  to  religion  that  I  have 
mainly  to  do ;  it  is  it  which  I  must  throughout  keej) 
in  view.  And  yet  it  is  impossible,  and  were  it  possi- 
ble it  would  be  unwise,  to  deal  with  it  exclusively, 
seeing  that  the  agnosticism  which  has  no  special  refer- 
ence to  religion  has  in  all  its  forms  and  varieties  a 
general  and  indirect  reference  to  the  agnosticism  di- 
rectly occupied  with  religion. 

Hence  I  distribute  partial  or  limited  agnosticism 
into:  (A)  agnosticism  which  has  a  special  reference 
to  religion,  and  (B)  agnosticism  which  has  not  such 
a  reference. 

A.  The  agnosticism  Avhich  has  a  special  reference 
to  religion  is  of  two  kinds.     It  is  either — 

1.  An  agnosticism  which  opposes  religion  and 
seeks  to  discredit  and  destroy  it, — anti-relig- 
ious (anti-theological)  agnosticism ; 

or  2.  An  agnosticism  which  aims  at  the  support 
and  defence  of  religion, — religious  (theologi- 
cal) agnosticism. 

B.  The  agnosticism  which  has  no  special  reference 
to  religion  may  be  subdivided  thus : — 

1.  The  agnosticism  which  originates  in  over- 
hasty  and  ambitious  theorising,  and  is  insep- 
arable from  the  systems  of  speculation  to 
which  such  theorising  gives  rise. 

2.  The  agnosticism  which  displays  itself  in 
given  departments  of  knowledge  or  regions 
of  inquiry. 

3.  Agnosticism  as  to  particular  powers  of  mind 
or  principles  and  conditions  of  thought. 

310 


CLASSIFICATION    OF    AGNOSTICISM 

And  4.  Agnosticism  as  to  the  ultimate  objects  of 
knowledge. 

A.  Agnosticism  must  not  be  supposed  to  have  nec- 
essarily any  special  reference  to  religion.  It  may 
have  no  more  a  special  reference  to  religion  than  to 
various  other  things,  and  may  have  a  special  reference 
to  other  things  when  it  has  none  to  religion.  It  may 
be  neither  religious  nor  anti-religious,  theological  nor 
anti-theological.  Still  less  is  it  to  be  assumed  that 
the  agnosticism  which  is  specially  related  to  religion 
can  only  be  antagonistically  related  to  it.  To  iden- 
tify agnostics  with  atheists  or  anti-theists,  or  to  repre- 
sent them  as  irreligious  and  impious,  is  to  misrepre- 
sent and  calumniate  a  large  section  of  them.  Many 
persons  who  may  justly  be  called  agnostics  have  a 
right  to  be  regarded  as  sincere  believers  in  God,  and 
even  as  convinced  and  earnest  Christians.  Agnosti- 
cism has  been  often  employed  honestly  and  zealously 
for  the  defence  of  theistic  and  Christian  faith.  It 
has  been  so  employed  both  by  philosophers  and  theo- 
logians, both  by  Catholics  and  Protestants. 

No  species  of  agnosticism,  however,  is  unrelated  to 
its  genus.  No  agnosticism  with  a  special  reference 
or  limited  sphere  is  without  reference  to  the  agnostic 
idea,  spirit,  and  aim.  On  the  contrary,  every  kind 
of  agnosticism  tends  towards  agnostic  completeness. 
Agnosticism  in  any  form  is  of  the  nature  of  agnos- 
ticism in  every  form,  and  whether  in  peace  or  at  war 
\Yith  other  forms  is  certain  of  contributing  to  the 
diffusion  of  the  agnostic  spirit  and  the  strength  of 
the  agnostic  movement.     Agnosticism  cannot  be  got 

311 


MITIGATED   AND    PAETIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

rid  of  by  the  help  of  agnosticism.  Science,  philoso- 
phy, and  religion  are  all  sure  to  suffer  when  they 
enter  into  alliance  with  agnosticism  of  any  kind. 

There  is  a  religious  and  an  anti-religious  agnosti- 
cism, but  both  are  hurtful  to  religion :  the  former 
not  less  so  than  the  latter.  Religious  agnosticism  has 
had  among  its  advocates  men  of  ardent  piety,  of  per- 
suasive eloquence,  and  of  remarkable  dialectical 
subtlety,  who  have  thought  that  they  could  make 
scepticism  the  shield  and  sword  of  religion.  Accord- 
ingly, they  have  striven  zealously  to  discredit  human 
reason  and  secular  knowledge,  and  represented  those 
who  could  not  recognise  the  wisdom  of  so  doing  as 
rationalists  and  irreligious.  But  their  labour  has 
been  in  vain ;  they  have  never  succeeded  in  justifying 
their  procedure  at  the  bar  of  reason ;  and  exjx^rience 
and  history  certify  that  although  attempts  of  the  kind 
referred  to  may  have  a  brief  notoriety,  their  failure 
is  sure  soon  to  become  evident.  The  alliance  of  scep- 
ticism as  to  reason  and  science  with  dogmatism  as  to 
faith  and  religion,  is  thoroughly  unnatural  and  irra- 
tional ;  and  it  is  not  religion,  or  even  religious  scepti- 
cism, but  anti-religious  scepticism,  or  scepticism  pure 
and  simple,  which  always  is  and  must  be  the  chief 
gainer  by  it.  Ardent  religious  agnostics  have  not 
infrequently  become  ardent  anti-religious  agnostics. 
They  have  made  many  more  unbelievers  than  believ- 
ers in  religion. 

Religious  agnostics  try  to  further  the  cause  of  re- 
ligion by  labouring  to  discredit  reason  with  reason- 
ings which  can  have  no  validity  unless  reason  is  trust- 

313 


KELIGIOUS,   ANTI-EELIGIOIJS   AGNOSTICISM 

worthy.  Anti-religious  agnostics  are,  perhaps,  less 
manifestly  inconsistent,  but  they  can  only  give  any 
semblance  of  plausibility  to  their  scepticism  as  to  the 
attainability  of  religious  truth  by  the  employment  of 
arguments  which  do  not  tell  against  religious  truth 
alone — arguments  of  which  the  conclusions  cannot  be 
reasonably  confined  within  the  sphere  of  religion. 
Their  reasonings  are  mostly  as  applicable  against 
what  anti-religious  agnostics  themselves  accept  as  gen- 
uine knowledge  and  strict  science  as  against  the  relig- 
ious knowledge  and  theological  science  which  they 
declare  to  be  delusion  and  pseudo-science.  They  are 
mostly,  in  fact,  substantially  the  same  reasonings 
which  have  been  employed  by  agnostics  for  more  than 
two  thousand  years  against  every,  or  almost  every, 
species  of  knowledge.  They  are  arguments,  that  is  to 
say,  of  which  the  conclusion,  were  they  applied  with- 
out prejudice  or  partiality,  would  be  absolute  agnosti- 
cism. 

B.  There  are,  however,  as  I  have  indicated,  many 
forms  of  agnosticism  which  have  no  special  reference 
'to  religion ;  which  are  neither  directly  favourable  nor 
directly  hostile  to  it ;  neither  specifically  religious  nor 
anti-religious,  theological  nor  anti-theological.  But 
although  they  have  not  a  special  reference  to  religion 
they  have  a  general  one,  although  not  a  direct  an  in- 
direct one.  And  they  have  all  the  same  sort  of  gen- 
eral and  indirect  reference  to  it ;  all  affect  it  in  the 
main  in  the  same  way ;  are  all  on  the  whole  unfavour- 
able and  injurious  to  it.  Religion  should  be  wholly 
true,  and  can  only  be  profited  by  what  is  true,  whereas 

313 


MITIGATED   AND   PAETIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

agnosticism  as  such,  however  Tnuch  truth  may  be  con- 
joined with  it  in  particular  minds  or  systems,  is  an 
"  ism  "  which  is  not  true,  and  cannot  benefit  religion. 
That  is  a  fact  which  cannot  be  too  thoroughly  realised. 

1.  One  class  of  the  forms  of  agnosticism  which 
have  no  special  reference  to  religion  originates  in 
faulty  -philosophising. 

The  varieties  of  agnosticism  within  it  are  corol- 
laries or  complements  of  all  the  narrow,  extreme, 
over-ambitious  speculative  theories  which  pretend  to 
explain  the  universe  of  being  and  becoming  with 
inadequate  means  and  in  inappropriate  ways.  Such 
theories  naturally  lead  to  agnostic  conclusions  as  to 
the  grounds  of  religion.  When  philosophy  and  relig- 
ion are  both  of  a  comprehensive,  reasonable,  and  self- 
consistent  character,  there  can  be  no  conflict,  there  can 
only  be  harmony  and  mutual  helpfulness  between 
them.  But  when  a  philosophy  has  none  of  these 
qualities,  it  is  most  likely  to  come  into  collision  with 
religion,  and  to  take  up  an  antagonistic  attitude  to  it. 

A  philosophy  which  maintains  that  knowledge  is 
only  of  things  we  see,  and  that  matter  is  the  one  sole 
ultimate  reality,  cannot  logically  concede  that  there 
is  religious  knowledge  or  spiritual  reality  properly 
so  called.  To  a  consistent  materialist  religion  can- 
not fail  to  seem  an  illusion,  and  theology  merely  a 
kind  of  agnosticism.  His  philosophical  theory  must 
have  an  anti-theological  agnostic  supplement.  I  do 
not  infer  from  this  that  every  materialist  must  be  an 
atheist  (an  anti-theistic  agnostic).  I  am  quite  aware 
that  there  have  been  theistic  and  even  Christian  mate- 

314 


AGNOSTIC    PHILOSOPHY   ANTI-EELIGIOTJS 

rialists,  of  the  sincerity  of  whose  religious  faith  and 
the  genuineness  of  whose  piety  fair-minded  men 
could  have  no  doubt.  I  am  quite  willing  to  grant 
that  Dr.  Priestley  was  a  better  Christian  than  Bishop 
Horsley,  who  enlisted  against  him  "  the  bad  passions 
of  men,  and  the  cruel  prejudices  of  party."  To  ques- 
tion, however,  the  consistency  of  a  man's  thinking  is 
one  thing,  and  to  deny  his  sincerity  or  piety  is  an- 
other. Philosophers  like  other  men,  and  materialists 
like  other  philosophers,  may  lapse  into  what  are  called 
"  happy  inconsistencies."  But  "  happy  inconsisten- 
cies "  are  always  exceptional  cases.  As  a  rule,  a 
materialistic  philosophy  will  not  arrive  at  spiritual- 
istic or  religious  conclusions ;  on  the  contrary,  it  will 
almost  always  be  found  associated  with  an  anti-theo- 
logical agnosticism.  It  was  so  in  ancient  times,  and 
is  so  now.  During  the  last  half  century  we  have  seen 
materialism  and  agnosticism  closely  conjoined  in  ac- 
tive hostility  to  religion  in  every  European  country. 

The  philosophical  theories  known  as  sensism,  em- 
piricism, phenomenalism,,  and  positivism  are  akin  to 
materialism,  although  distinguishable  from  it,  and 
like  materialism  they  all  lead  to  varieties  of  scepti- 
cism of  a  nature  conformed  to  their  own.  There  is 
also  subjectivism,  a  subjective  or  idealistic  scepticism, 
just  the  opposite  of  materialistic  scepticism,  but  not 
less  antagonistically  agnostic  towards  religious  truth. 
Its  full  logical  outcome  is  the  form  of  scepticism 
known  as  solipsism.  All  these  theories  are  agnostic, 
and  also  anti-religious  and  anti-theological  in  ten- 
dency. 

315 


MITIGATED   AND    PAETIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

2.  A  second  class  of  the  forms  of  agnosticism 
which  have  not  a  special  or  direct  but  only  a  general 
and  indirect  reference  to  religion  contains  those  which 
are  associated  with  particular  departments  of  inquiry. 

There  is  no  science  which  may  not  be,  or  which 
even  has  not  been,  subjected  to  sceptical  criticism  and 
declared  unworthy  of  the  name  of  knowledge. 

(a)  The  opinion  that  mathematics  at  least  has  been 
unchallenged  is  a  vulgar  error.  The  logical  perplex- 
ities involved  in  its  fundamental  conceptions  had  oc- 
cupied the  thoughts  of  some  of  the  Greek  philosophers 
even  before  the  days  of  Pyrrho ;  and  there  is  no  rea- 
son, so  far  as  I  am  aware,  for  supposing  that  any  of 
the  Greek  sceptics  considered  it  entitled  to  immunity 
from  their  attacks.  Sextus  Empiricus  was  probably 
a  generally  accurate  representative  of  their  views 
when,  in  his  Pyrrhonic  Institutes,  he  questioned  the 
very  possibility  of  demonstration  (bk.  ii.  c.  13),  and 
dwelt  at  length  on  the  difficulties  implied  in  the  very 
ideas  of  motion,  magnitude,  addition  and  subtraction, 
whole  and  part,  continuance,  change,  place,  time,  and 
number  (bk.  iii.  c.  7-18)  ;  as  also  when,  in  his  treatise 
Against  Mathematicians,  he  disputed  the  certainty  of 
geometry  (bk.  iii.),  of  arithmetic  (bk.  iv.),  and  of 
astronomy  (bk.  v.).  Doubts  and  difficulties  of  a  kind 
similar  to  those  urged  by  Sextus — epistemological 
and  metaphysical  doubts  and  difficulties— are  not 
even  now  all  solved  or  eliminated  ;  nor  are  they  likely 
soon  to  be.  Metageometry  has  quite  recently  been 
bringing  mathematicians  face  to  face  with  previously 
unsuspected  doubts  and  mysteries  which  suggest  that 

316 


MATHEMATICS   AND  AGNOSTICISM 

the  claims  even  of  their  science  maj  be  assailed  not 
merely  from  its  under  or  empirical  side  but  also  from 
its  upper  or  speculative  side.  In  a  word,  absolute 
knowledge,  absolute  certainty,  in  a  strictly  absolute 
sense  of  the  terms,  may  be  argued  without  absurdity 
to  be  even  in  mathematics  beyond  human  attainment, 
and  the  mathematical  sciences  themselves  to  be  sur- 
rounded with  nescience  and  dependent  on  supposi- 
tions which  involve  metaphysical  propositions. 

That  conclusion,  however,  will  not  warrant  math- 
ematical scepticism.  It  means  no  more  than  that  a 
finite  intelligence  cannot  be  an  infinite  intelligence, 
and  that  only  to  the  latter  can  there  be  "  no  dark- 
ness at  all."  The  mathematician  may  safely  rest 
content  with  logical  demonstration  from  propositions 
self-evident  to  him,  and  with  such  certainty  as  such 
demonstration  gives,  until  he  is  shown  that  in  math- 
ematical processes  the  axioms  are  not  self-evident  or 
the  inferences  logical,  or  that  there  are  counter-axioms 
as  evident  or  counter-inferences  as  valid  as  those 
which  he  has  accepted,  or  that  there  are  at  least  clear 
and  weighty  positive  ab  extra  reasons  for  suspecting 
the  rationality  and  certainty  of  his  science.  .  Were 
mathematical  agnosticism,  however,  thus  vindicated, 
reason  itself  would  be  so  discredited  that  it  could  not 
be  trusted  in  the  religious  or  in  any  other  sphere. 
Reason  would  be  proved  to  be  rooted  in  unreason. 
But  mathematical  agnosticism  cannot  be  thus  estab- 
lished without  anti-theological  agnosticism  also  being 
established.  The  trustworthiness  of  reason  is  im- 
plied in  the  knowledge  of  God,  and  so  as  much  a  pre- 

317 


MITIGATED   AND    PARTIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

supposition  of  theology  as  of  mathematics,  while  the 
trustworthiness  of  God  is  a  guarantee  of  the  trust- 
worthiness of  reason  in  all  its  normal  processes  and 
legitimate  acquisitions. 

(b)  Scepticism  as  to  the  possibility  of  physical  sci- 
ence was  prevalent  in  the  classical  and  in  the  medie- 
val world. 

Grecian  sages  generally  looked  with  contempt  on 
the  facts  with  which  such  science  deals,  and  saw  in 
them  no  signs  of  law  or  order.  Plato  relegated  the 
whole  world  of  sense  to  the  limbo  of  mere  opinion,  and 
denied  that  there  was  any  science  of  phenomena,  or 
that  science  could  be  reached  through  the  study  of 
phenomena.  The  scholastic  divines  were  no  wiser. 
Theology  was  so  dominant  in  the  Middle  Ages  that, 
while  unlimited  trust  was  given  to  all  Biblical  refer- 
ences to  physical  things,  little  interest  or  confidence 
was  felt  in  their  direct  study.  Hence  the  views  of 
the  men  of  those  times  on  the  subjects  of  which  the 
positive  sciences  treat  were  very  strange  and  erro- 
neous, being  largely  due  both  to  an  irrational  credulity 
and  an  irrational  incredulity,  or,  in  other  words,  to  a 
combination  of  dogmatism  and  scepticism — of  dog- 
matism, as  regarded  the  words  of  a  book,  and  of  scep- 
ticism as  regarded  the  facts  of  nature.  Only  slowly 
and  with  difficulty, — only  through  protracted  and 
painful  conflicts, — have  the  studies  occupied  with 
natural  objects  become  genuine  sciences;  and  there 
are  some  who  have  represented  the  history  of  their 
progress  as  an  exemplification  of  the  triumph  of  scep- 
ticism and  science  over  religion  and  theology. 

318 


SCEPTICISM  AS  TO   PHYSICAL  SCIENCE 

But  it  is  assuredly  notliiug  of  the  kind.  Religion 
lias  gained  as  much  from  what  has  taken  place  as 
science.  True  theology  finds  strong  support  and  rich 
nutriment  in  those  emancipated  sciences  which  are 
now  so  zealously  and  successfully  reading  and  ex- 
plaining the  book  of  nature.  That  book  is  the  pri- 
mary, universal,  and  inexhaustible  text-book  of  divine 
revelation,  and  although  inadequate  to  satisfy  all  the 
wants  of  sinful  man,  it  is,  and  will  always  be,  neces- 
sary to  him,  not  only  as  a  physical  but  a  spiritual  be- 
ing. It  is  the  oldest  and  most  comprehensive  of  the 
media  of  divine  revelation,  and  the  correct  interpreta- 
tion of  it  is  only  possible  through  the  aid  and  instru- 
mentality of  the  appropriate  sciences.  Hence  every 
enlightened  theologian  of  to-day  sees  in  the  dogma- 
tism which  would  obstruct  or  enslave  those  sciences 
an  ally  of  the  scepticism  which  is  an  enemy  both  of 
pure  religion  and  true  theology.  The  more  accurate- 
ly and  fully  physical  nature  is  investigated  and  ex- 
plained by  the  sciences  of  nature,  the  more  must  the 
human  mind  recognise  it  to  be  pervaded  by  thought 
akin  to  its  own ;  the  more  must  the  human  spirit  find 
itself  "  at  home  "  therein. 

(c)  Historical  scepticism,  otherwise  known  as 
"  erudite  scepticism  "  and  "  historical  Pyrrhonism," 
belongs  to  the  same  group. 

AMiat  is  distinctive  of  it  is  the  extent  to  which  it 
challenges  the  credibility  of  historical  narrative  and 
questions  the  possibility  of  historical  science ;  and  the 
conclusion  at  which  it  arrives  may  almost  be  formu- 
lated in  the  terms  of  the  bon-mot  attributed  to  Fon- 

319 


MITIGATED   AND    PARTIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

tenelle,  I'histoire  nest  qu'une  fable  convenue.  It 
contends  that  history,  as  an  account  of  events,  is  very 
little  to  be  trusted,  and  that  a  science  of  history  can- 
not reasonably  be  looked  for.  Much  may  be  said  for 
that  contention.  History  is  rarely  the  record  of 
deeds  witnessed,  or  of  words  heard  by  historians 
themselves;  it  is  to  a  small  extent  founded  on  direct 
observation.  Its  data  are,  of  necessity,  largely 
reached  by  reasonings  and  guessings  far  from  indis- 
putable. The  history  of  man  is  known  to  us  during 
only  a  very  short  portion  of  the  time  that  he  has  been 
on  earth.  So-called  ancient  history  is  largely  fabu- 
lous. Most  of  the  classical  historians  were  very  un- 
critical. Medieval  historians  were  exceedingly  cred- 
ulous, and  often  relied  on  forged  documents.  It  is 
impossible  for  even  the  most  honest,  learned,  and  la- 
borious historian  to  give  a  detailed  account  of  any 
lengthened  period,  or  comprehensive  view  of  any  com- 
plex portion  of  history,  without  falling  into  many 
errors.  And  there  are  few  historians  who  are  not 
biassed  by  self-interest,  by  prejudice,  by  party  spirit, 
by  the  desire  to  be  vivid,  picturesque,  and  popular, 
and,  in  a  word,  by  a  multitude  of  perverting  influ- 
ences. It  is  certainly  not  on  the  side  of  scepticism 
that  ordinary  readers  of  history  err.  Many  are  ready 
to  accept  in  blind  faith  whatever  is  presented  to 
them. 

There  have  been  those,  however,  who  may  fairly  be 
designated  "  historical  Pyrrhonists."  As  typical  ex- 
amples of  erudite  scepticism  may  be  mentioned  Bayle, 
a  main  purpose  of  whose  famous  Dictionary  was  the 

320 


HISTORICAL  SCEPTICISM 

suggesting  of  historical  doubts;  Father  Hardouin, 
who  maintained  that  the  works  attributed  to  Thucyd- 
ides,  Livy,  and  most  of  the  so-called  classical  writings, 
as  well  as  the  chronicles  and  documents  relating  to  the 
Franks,  were  forgeries ;  Schopenhauer,  who  has  as- 
sailed the  historical  muse  Clio  in  terms  the  most  con- 
temptuous and  even  indecent ;  and  M.  Louis  Bour- 
deau,  who,  in  his  L'Histoire  et  les  Historiens,  1888, 
has  learnedly  argued  that  of  true  history  there  is  as 
yet  almost  none,  and  that  the  historical  method  should 
be  abandoned  for  the  statistical. 

Almost  the  only  "  historical  sceptics  "  of  the  pres- 
ent day,  however,  are  not  those  who  deny  the  possibil- 
ity of  discovering  historical  truth  and  presenting  it  in 
an  accurate  and  appropriate  narrative  form,  but  those 
who  maintain  that  there  can  be  no  science  or  scientific 
study  of  history.  Their  attitude  towards  history  is 
very  much  the  same  as  the  attitude  towards  nature  of 
the  ancient  philosophers  and  medieval  doctors,  who 
thought  a  direct  study  of  the  material  world  would 
not  yield  physical  science.  The  unwisdom  of  it  will 
doubtless  be  made  evident  in  the  same  way.  In  fact, 
a  science  of  history  is  manifestly  in  course  of  forma- 
tion, and  was  never  so  eagerly  cultivated  as  at  present. 
All  sociological  studies  are  of  the  nature  of  contribu- 
tions to  historical  science,  and  the  last  quarter  of  a 
century  has  probably  produced  more  such  studies 
than  all  previous  centuries  together.  Historical  sci- 
ence may  likely  enough  never  attain  the  exactness  of 
physical  science,  and  yet  reach  greater  depth  and  ful- 
ness of  knowledge.     Man,  just  because  man,  is  capa- 

321 


MITIGATED   AND   PAETIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

ble  of  knowing  more  that  truly  deserves  the  name  of 
knowledge  about  human  nature  and  human  history 
than  about  what  is  merely  material  or  animal.  He 
can  enter  more  deeply  into  his  own  heart  than  into  the 
nature  of  a  stone,  into  the  thoughts  of  Buddha  or 
Plato  than  into  the  mind  of  an  ox  or  sheep.  He  has 
to  interpret  nature  by  himself,  not  himself  by  nature. 
The  human  mind  and  its  history  are  in  themselves 
more  intelligible  than  the  physical  world  and  its  evo- 
lution, and  may  be  expected  when  scientifically  stud- 
ied and  philosophically  interpreted  to  contribute  more 
to  knowledge  in  general  and  to  religious  knowledge  in 
particular.  Matter  is  the  stage  prepared  for  the 
drama  of  the  spirit.  There  is,  we  may  be  sure,  more 
significance  in  the  drama  than  in  the  stage,  and  what 
that  significance  is  will  be  gradually  brought  more 
fully  to  light.  The  refutation  of  historical  scepticism 
may  safely  be  left  to  the  future.  The  future  will  not 
fail  to  undertake  the  task,  and  will  accomplish  it  by 
simply  marching  onwards.     Solvitur  ambulando. 

(d)  Another  variety  of  the  same  kind  of  agnosti- 
cism is  "  ethical  "  agnosticism. 

It  also  has  had  a  lengthened  history,  and  has  at 
times  had  considerable  popularity.  The  diversity 
and  contradictions  of  the  moral  judgments  of  man- 
kind has  always  been  its  favourite  argument.  Yet 
it  is  a  very  inconclusive  one,  as  it  owes  whatever  ap- 
pearance of  validity  it  possesses  to  a  manifest  over- 
sight, the  overlooking  of  the  comprehensive  unity  of 
principles  underlying  the  easily  explicable  differ- 
ences of  applications  and  inferences.     An  impartial 

323 


ETHICAL    SCEPTICISM 

study  of  the  relevant  facts  cannot  fail  to  show  that 
man  is  always  and  everywhere  a  moral  being,  and  that 
the  more  truly  man  he  becomes  the  more  does  his  mo- 
rality commend  itself  to  the  common  conscience  of 
•mankind.  Far  from  there  being  any  incompatibility 
between  a  continuous  moral  progress  and  the  immuta- 
bility of  moral  truths,  there  is  a  complete  harmony. 

Further,  all  ethical  scepticism  is  compelled  to  as- 
sume the  ethical  ideas  and  distinctions  which  it  repu- 
diates. The  moral  law  in  its  essentials  is  not  only 
confirmed  by  the  common  consent  of  mankind,  but 
practically  recognised  where  it  is  not  explicitly  af- 
firmed, and  spontaneously  obeyed  by  those  who  logi- 
cally should  disobey  it.  How  should  it  be  otherwise  ? 
Only  where  there  are  order  and  reason  of  some  kind 
can  there  be  any  truth ;  and  wherever  there  are  order 
and  reason  there  must  be  truth,  and  essentially  the 
same  truth,  for  truth  is  just  conformity  to  the  order 
of  things  and  the  requirements  of  reason.  All  the 
heavenly  bodies  may  at  some  time  or  other  be  inhab- 
ited by  moral  agents.  But  there  can  be  no  moral 
agents  except  in  intelligible  and  orderly  worlds,  and 
in  all  such  worlds  the  ethics  of  rational  agents  must 
be,  like  their  logic  and  mathematics,  as  Dr.  Paul  Ca- 
rus  has  justly  argued,  "  in  fundamentals  the  same."  ^ 

Obviously  to  the  extent  that  ethical  scepticism  is 
a  partial  and  exclusive  scepticism,  tacitly  or  openly 
claiming  to  be  the  only  scepticism,  it  is  illogical  and 
self-contradictory.  There  is  no  good  reason  for  con- 
fining scepticism  to  the  sphere  of  morals.  'Na.j,  if 
•  Fundamental  Problems,  46-52. 
323 


MITIGATED   AND    PARTIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

consciousness,  in  the  form  of  conscience,  cannot  be 
relied  on,  how  can  it  be  relied  on  in  any  other  form  ? 
If  ethical  agnosticism  must  be  accepted,  how  can  re- 
ligious agnosticism  be  rejected,  or  the  claims  of  re- 
ligious science  vindicated  ?  If  scepticism  as  to  the 
knowledge  of  ethical  truth  be  warranted,  so  must 
scepticism  as  to  the  knowledge  of  religious  truth.  The 
shortest  way  to  complete  religious  agnosticism  is  to 
dispute  the  possibility  of  a  knowledge  of  God,  and 
God  must  be  admitted  to  be  unknowable  if  ethical 
truth  be  unknowable, — if  reason  be  unable  to  appre- 
hend goodness,  righteousness,  and  other  ethical  excel- 
lences. The  very  thought  of  a  non-moral  or  immoral 
God  is  one  in  which  no  sane  mind  can  find  rest  or 
satisfaction.  It  is  a  self -contradictory  and  monstrous 
thought.  Were  it  a  necessary  or  legitimate  conclu- 
sion of  reason,  reason  would  be  self-stultified,  and 
neither  science  nor  religion  could  be  shown  to  be 
valid. 

(e)  Another  form  of  the  same  kind  of  scepticism 
as  ethical  agnosticism  is  metaphysical  agnosticism. 

While  undoubtedly  prevalent,  it  is  apt  to  seem  even 
more  so  than  it  really  is.  The  chief  reason  of  that  is 
that  many  who  profess  to  be  metaphysical  agnostics 
do  not  know  what  metaphysics  means.  Obviously 
before  a  man  declares  metaphysics  to  be  a  pseudo- 
science  or  fancied  knowledge,  and  that  he  has  no  faith 
in  it, — or,  in  other  words,  before  he  poses  as  a  meta- 
physical sceptic, — ^he  should  know  what  thoughtful 
writers  on  metaphysics  mean  by  it,  and  should  have 
studied  the  history,  the  chief  systems,  the  main  prob- 

334 


MEANING    OF    METAPHYSICS 

lems,  the  methods  and  the  claims  of  metaphysics.  But 
that  is  what  comparatively  few  men  have  done.  The 
ordinary  man  does  not  even  ask  what  metaphysics 
is.  The  generality  even  of  scientists  are  innocent  of 
metaphysical  curiosity.  The  majority  of  self-styled 
metaphysical  sceptics  have  never  been  earnest  meta- 
physical students.  Many  of  them  show,  as  I  have 
said,  that  they  do  not  even  know  in  what  sense  the 
term  metaphysics  is,  or  ought  to  be,  employed. 

No  one  who  does  attach  a  reasonable  meaning  to 
the  term  "  metaphysics  "  will  be  inclined  to  entertain 
or  advocate  "  metaphysical  agnosticism  "  with  a  light 
heart.  Whoever  understands  aright  what  metaphys- 
ics is,  and  consequently  what  metaphysical  scepticism 
properly  signifies,  must  recognise  such  scepticism  to 
be  a  most  radical  and  far-reaching  agnosticism,  a  form 
thereof  assent  to  which  must  involve  grave  and  tre- 
mendous issues. 

What,  then,  is  metaphysics  ?  It  has  been  suggest- 
ed that  no  one  knows  what  it  is,  and  that  there  are 
as  many  different  conceptions  of  it  as  there  are  inde- 
pendent metaphysical  thinkers,  or  at  least  as  there  are 
distinct  metaphysical  schools.  Nor  need  it  be  denied 
that  there  is  some  slight,  although  only  very  slight, 
appearance  of  foundation  for  the  opinion.  Meta- 
physicians often  arrive  at  very  different  and  conflict- 
ing results,  and  still  oftener  perhaps  fail  to  arrive  at 
any  definite  or  positive  results.  There  is  much  truth 
and  wisdom  as  well  as  wit  in  De  Morgan's  humorous 
definition  of  metaphysics :  "  The  science  to  which 
ignorance  goes  to  learn  its  knowledge,  and  knowledge 

325 


MITIGATED   AND    PARTIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

to  learn  its  ignorance.  On  which  all  men  agree  that 
it  is  the  key,  but  no  two  upon  how  it  is  to  be  put  into 
the  lock."  In  the  course  of  its  history  the  word  meta- 
physics has  been  employed  in  very  different  ways; 
and  even  at  the  present  day  all  who  expressly  treat  of 
metaphysics  do  not  mean  by  the  term  precisely  the 
same  thing.  But,  certainly,  so  very  general  an  agree- 
ment as  to  how  it  should  be  understood  has  at  length 
been  arrived  at  that  there  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt 
as  to  what  in  the  main  it  ought  to  mean.  Almost  with- 
out exception  metaphysicians  now  avoid  confounding 
metaphysical  with  either  physical  or  psychical  sci- 
ence in  general,  or  with  any  of  the  physical  or  psy- 
chical sciences,  and  treat  of  it  as  the  science  or  theory 
which  concerns  itself  with  what  both  underlies  and 
overlies  all  the  special  sciences,  mathematical,  nat- 
ural, mental,  and  theological ;  or,  to  express  myself 
more  precisely,  which  deals  alike  with  the  first  prin- 
ciples and  the  last  results  of  rational  inquiry — alike 
with  the  fundamental  conditions,  categories,  and  lim- 
its of  knowledge,  and  with  the  ultimate  nature,  rela- 
tions, and  laws  of  reality.  Thus  understood,  it  is  the 
theory  of  knowing  and  being,  or  of  the  universal  and 
essential  in  truth  and  existence,  and  includes  episte- 
mology  (which  should  be  carefully  distinguished 
from  logic  and  methodology)  and  ontology.  Some 
metaphysicians  indeed  would  identify  it  with  the  lat- 
ter, to  the  exclusion  of  the  former;  but  the  larger 
view,  comprehensive  of  both,  is,  I  think,  much  to  be 
preferred.  In  fact,  it  is  practically  impossible  to 
adhere  to  the  narrower  view ;  impossible  to  act  on  it 

326 


METAPHYSICAL  SCEPTICISM 

consistently  for  a  single  instant  of  time.  Truth  and 
reality  are  inseparable.  There  is  no  knowing  with- 
out being,  or  being  unrelated  to  knowing.  Truth  and 
reality,  knowing  and  being,  are  throughout  correlative 
and  coincident.  Epistemology  and  ontology  are  in 
intimate  connection  at  every  point. 

If  metaphysics  be  what  has  now  been  indicated, 
and  what  is  now  almost  universally  regarded  as  the 
only  reasonable  conception  of  it,  the  nature  and  sig- 
nificance of  metaphysical  scepticism  must  be  at  once 
apparent.  Metaphysical  scepticism  is  scepticism  as 
to  what  is  primary  in  rationality  and  knowledge;  or 
as  to  what  is  ultimate  in  being  and  appearance;  or, 
and  this  is  the  more  consistent  as  well  as  more  compre- 
hensive view,  as  to  what  is  universal  and  essential 
both  in  thought  and  existence.  If  understood  in  the 
first  sense  or  reference,  however,  it  means  that  there 
are  no  real  or  rational  bases  for  any  kind  of  knowl- 
edge or  science ;  if  in  the  second,  that  there  are  no 
known  grounds  of  reality  and  that  all  appearance  is 
illusory  and  inexplicable ;  and  if  in  the  third,  that  all 
epistemology  and  ontology  are  worthless,  knowledge 
wholly  unattainable,  and  existence  altogether  vanity. 
There  can  consequently  be  no  deeper  depth  of  scepti- 
cism than  metaphysical  scepticism.  It  leaves  the 
mind  with  nothing  to  rest  on  or  hold  by.  The  contra- 
dictions of  the  senses,  the  contradictions  of  reason  and 
reasoning,  the  contradictions  between  experience  and 
theory,  are  what  it  appeals  to  in  its  own  behalf,  and 
these  can  warrant  no  trust  in  any  positive  truth.  Thus 
living,  moving,  and  having  its  being  in  self-contradic- 

327 


MITIGATED   AND    PARTIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

tion,  it  can  itself  be  a  support  to  nothing,  while  it 
strives  to  undermine  all  the  real  foundations  of  sci- 
ence and  philosophy.  The  only  conclusion  to  which 
it  naturally  leads  is  the  unattainability  of  knowledge, 
the  incognoscibility  of  existence.  It  signifies  as  re- 
gards philosophy  that  all  its  problems  are  insoluble, 
and  as  regards  the  sciences  that  all  their  findings  are 
dependent  on  unwarranted  assumptions. 

Its  bearing  on  theology  is  obvious.  Theology  is 
professedly  not  sceptical  inquiry  but  positive  science. 
It  rests  on  faith  in  truth,  and  in  truth  of  a  metaphys- 
ical nature.  It  seeks,  believes  that  it  finds,  exhibits, 
and  defends  such  truth.  Metaphysical  scepticism 
implies  and  includes  theological  scepticism,  and  hence 
necessarily  combats  theology  and  denies  its  right  to 
existence.  If  it  be  true,  theology  is  false ;  if  theology 
be  true,  it  is  false.  Theology  is  primarily  and  main- 
ly knowledge  of  God — a  knowledge  which  has  to  be 
attained  through  reason  and  experience,  through  nat- 
ure and  history,  and,  in  a  word,  through  all  the  wayg 
and  forms  in  which  God  has  made  Himself  known. 
Metaphysical  scepticism  questions  and  denies  our 
right  to  regard  anything  as  a  medium  of  knowledge  of 
God.     But, — 

"  Of  God  above  or  man  below, 
What  can  we  reason  but  from  what  we  know  ?  " 

(f)  The  forms  of  agnosticism  m^ay  likewise  be 
grouped  with  reference  to  the  mental  powers  or  prin- 
ciples of  which  the  validity  and  veracity  are  disputed. 
Every  power  and  principle  of  mind  may  be  scepti- 

328 


SCEPTICISM  AXD  THE   SENSES 

cally  treated,  and,  in  fact,  there  is  not  one  of  them 
which  agnosticism  has  not  at  some  time  and  in  some 
form  assailed. 

To  the  simple  and  rude  mind  the  clearest  and  most 
satisfactory  of  all  testimony  apjx^ars  to  be  that  of  the 
senses.  To  the  critical  and  reflective  mind  doubts 
respecting  its  reliability  and  worth  necessarily  sug- 
ge-st  themselves.  The  seeming  anomalies,  the  monot- 
onous and  ceaseless  changes,  the  apparent  purposeless- 
ness,  the  labour  and  sorrow,  which  perplexed  the  soul 
of  the  author  of  Ecclesiastes  when  he  contemplat- 
ed the  world  of  the  senses,  also  left  many  traces  of 
doubt  and  sadness  in  the  lines  of  the  poets  and  the  re- 
flections of  the  sages  of  ancient  Greece.  Both  Brah- 
manists  and  Buddhists  regard  the  world  of  the  senses 
as  a  world  of  illusion, — a  world  of  which  "  illusion  " 
is  "  the  material  cause."  All  the  chief  sceptics  of  the 
Western  world  have  disputed  the  credibility  of  the 
senses  as  witnesses  to  objective  reality. 

The  so-called  errors  and  contradictions  of  the  senses 
have,  of  course,  afforded  the  materials  for  one  of  the 
main  arguments  in  support  of  distrust  of  their  testi- 
mony. It  is  easy  to  adduce  numerous  instances  of 
various  kinds  of  phenomena  which  may  be  so  called 
and  so  represented.  Attentively  regarded,  however, 
all  phenomena  of  the  kind  will  be  found  to  be  the 
results  either  of  hasty  and  inconsiderate  inferences  or 
of  abnormal  conditions  of  the  organs  of  sense,  and  not 
the  deliverances  of  sound  senses  properly  exercised. 
They  are  self-deceptions  for  which  not  the  constitu- 
tion or  action  of  men's  senses  are  to  blame  but  men 

329 


MITIGATED   AND    PAliTIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

themselves.  Opinionis  mendacium  est  non  oculorum. 
The  subjectivity  of  the  senses  has  been  not  less  relied 
on  as  an  argument  to  justify  scepticism  as  to  their 
testimony.  It  is  represented  as  implying  the  inabil- 
ity of  the  mind  to  apprehend  really  external  objects. 
Descartes,  Malebranche,  Norris,  Berkeley,  and  oth- 
ers, made  use  of  it  before  Hume  gave  full  and  explicit 
expression  to  its  implicit  scepticism, — a  scepticism 
which  centred  in  the  assumption  that  not  things,  not 
realities,  but  merely  ideas  or  images  are  consciously 
apprehended.  Those  who  have  succumbed  to  such 
scepticism,  while  right  in  regarding  sensations  as  in- 
dispensable to  the  knowledge  of  external  objects  and 
yet  in  themselves  incapable  of  attaining  or  constitut- 
ing it,  have  erred  entirely  in  conceiving  of  them  as 
existing  apart  from  perceptive  and  rational  concomi- 
tants, and  in  disbelieving  that  what  they  could  not  do 
alone  they  could  not  do  when  not  alone.  Mere  sensa- 
tions are  mere  abstractions  which  have  no  existence  in 
any  individual  mind  or  actual  experience.  All  real 
sensation  is  conjoined  with  perceptive  and  appetitive 
power,  and  in  man  at  least  with  conception  and  rea- 
son. It  is  only  an  element,  although  an  important 
element,  of  the  psychical  process  implied  in  the  cog- 
nition of  external  things. 

Scepticism  as  to  memory  is  as  possible,  and  may  be 
advocated  as  plausibly,  as  scepticism  regarding  per- 
ception. Remembrance  is  an  act  no  less  mysterious 
than  vision.  Of  the  many  attempts  which  have  been 
made  to  explain  it  not  one  has  found  much  accept- 
ance.     There  is  further  between  its  testimony  and 

330 


SCEPTICISM  AS   TO   MEMOEY 

that  of  the  senses  a  radical  difference  bj  no  means  in 
its  favour.  Acts  of  perception  may  be  reasonably 
regarded  as  immediate  and  direct  apprehensions  of 
facts,  and  are  generally  so  regarded.  E^ot  so  acts  of 
memory.  Memory  is  dependent  on  immediate  and 
intuitive  knowledge,  but  cannot  possess  or  supply  it, 
— cannot  know  the  past  as  present,  the  non-existent 
as  existent.  Probably  no  psychologist  now  holds  Dr. 
Reid's  view  to  the  contrary.  Recollections  are  never 
so  vivid  and  exact  as  the  perceptions  and  experiences 
recalled,  and  are  generally  very  vague  and  blurred, 
very  effaced  and  fragmentary,  in  comparison.  Of  all 
our  cognitive  powers,  memory  is  the  most  closely  con- 
joined with  imagination,  and  has  even  been  defined 
as  "  reproductive  imagination."  But  imagination, 
as  every  one  knows,  changes  the  appearances  of  all 
that  it  acts  on,  and  shows  little  preference  for  truth 
over  error.  Memory  is  also  largely  affected  by  the 
disturbing  influences  of  external  surroundings,  cor- 
poreal conditions,  emotions,  passions,  habits,  &c.  All 
experience  teaches  that  it  is  exceedingly  apt  to  play 
us  false.  Its  illusions  are  innumerable,  and  even  its 
hallucinations  are  of  many  kinds.  It  is  habitually 
inaccurate  in  the  performance  even  of  what  may  be 
regarded  as  its  most  special  function — ^the  measure- 
ment of  time.  A  very  poor  chronometer  can  tell  more 
exactly  the  duration  of  a  second,  a  minute,  or  an  hour, 
than  the  best  memory.  There  are  certain  situations 
in  which  minutes  seem  to  us  intolerably  long,  and  oth- 
ers in  which  we  hardly  notice  the  flight  of  hours.  In 
early  youth  years,  as  recalled,  seem  long ;  in  old  age, 

331 


MITIGATED   AND    PARTIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

short.  The  entire  mnemonic  process — how  anything 
whatever  enters  into  memory  and  can  be  retained  or 
recalled — is  as  yet  an  altogether  unexplained  mys- 
tery. 

The  facts  just  referred  to  may  suffice  to  indicate  to 
my  readers  how  easy  it  may  be,  by  simply  dwelling 
on  the  defects  and  errors  of  memory,  to  get  up  a 
plausible  plea  for  scepticism  as  to.  its  trustworthiness. 
It  is  largely  by  such  "  exclusive  dealing  "  that  scepti- 
cism in  all  its  forms  is,  and  always  has  been,  support- 
ed. Obviously,  the  method  is  as  applicable  against 
the  credibility  of  any  one  faculty  as  of  any  other. 
As  obviously,  however,  it  is  a  fallacious  method, 
and  one  by  which  in  no  case  can  agnosticism  as  to  any 
of  the  faculties  of  mind  be  established.  The  agnos- 
ticism which  bases  itself  exclusively  on  the  errors  and 
defects  of  any  of  our  faculties  must  be,  as  regards 
even  that  faculty,  a  failure.  What  is  overlooked  or 
concealed  in  it  is  not  destroyed,  or  lessened,  or  in  any 
way  got  rid  of  by  merely  being  ignored.  Hence,  when 
all  that  can  be  said  to  depreciate  and  discredit  mem- 
ory has  been  fully  said,  its  essential  veracity  and  in- 
estimable value  will  remain  intact  and  undiminished. 

Whoever  has  read  the  "Confessions"  of  St.  Au- 
gustine will  not  be  likely  to  forget  the  eulogy  on  mem- 
ory in  Book  x.  Augustine  there  descants  with  mar- 
vellous eloquence  and  clear  introspective  vision  on  the 
spacious  regions  and  palaces  of  memory ;  on  the  treas- 
ures of  innumerable  images  of  things  of  all  sorts  con- 
tained in  them ;  of  the  media  in  and  through  which 
they  have  been  acquired ;  of  how  they  are  preserved 

332 


AUGUSTINE   ON   MEMORY 

from  loss  and  brought  up  for  use ;  and  of  how  so  much 
of  heaven,  earth,  and  sea,  of  the  histories  of  men  and 
nations,  of  learning,  art,  and  science,  as  well  as  of 
one's  own  self,  feelings,  deeds,  and  experiences  belong 
to  them.  Realising  how  divinely  wonderful  the  gift 
of  memory  is,  he  sought  in  chapter  after  chapter  of 
the  book  to  which  I  refer  to  make  others  appreciate 
it  as  he  felt  himself  constrained  to  do.  Now  let  us 
mark  this  fact.  In  all  that  he  has  written  in  his 
elaborate  eulogium  of  memory  there  is  probably  not  a 
sentence  which  has  been  disproved  or  discredited  by 
agnostic  or  any  other  criticism.  Between  the  criti- 
cism and  the  conclusion  of  agnosticism  as  to  memory 
there  is  an  enormous  and  irrational  interval.  The 
criticism,  wherever  true,  only  indicates  defects  quite 
compatible  with  the  essential  truthfulness  of  memory, 
and  with  its  being  all  that  Augustine  has  described  it 
to  be.  Even  a  very  ordinary  memory  can  retain,  with 
an  extraordinary  degree  of  evidence  and  accuracy,  a 
wonderful  wealth  of  experiences  and  acquisitions. 
And  in  the  great  majority  of  cases  in  which  memory 
fails  us,  it  does  not  even  so  fail  us  as  not  to  leave  us 
conscious  that  it  fails  us.  We  remember  that  we 
have  forgotten,  and,  as  Augustine  says,  "  we  have  not 
yet  forgotten  that  which  we  remember  ourselves  to 
have  forgotten."  WTiere  there  is  no  remembrance 
there  is  utter  effacement  of  memory,  but  no  error  or 
deception  of  memory. 

Scepticism  as  to  reason  is  another  form  of  the  same 
species  of  agnosticism.  Here  I  would  only  remark 
that  as  in  every  other  form  of  scepticism  as  to  partic- 

333 


MITIGATED   AND    PAETIAL   AGNOSTICISM 

ular  powers  or  principles  of  cognition  there  will  be 
found  associated  with  the  excess  of  distrust,  distinc- 
tive of  it,  a  correlative  excess  of  confidence  in  another 
power  or  principle,  so  is  it  in  the  case  of  scepticism 
as  to  reason.  The  chief  cause  of  such  scepticism  is 
an  exaggerated  estimate  of  the  place  and  function  of 
sense  in  cognition.  Knowledge  is  attempted  to  be 
traced  exclusively  or  mainly  to  sensation.  That, 
however,  can  only  be  done,  or  even  seem  to  be  done, 
by  an  unnatural  abstraction  of  sense  from  reason, 
which  makes  sense  itself  impotent  and  untrustworthy. 
Mere  sensation  has  not  been  shown  ever  to  exist  alone, 
or  even  to  be  conceivable  as  existing  alone.  And,  fur- 
ther, mere  sensation,  even  if  it  existed,  would  be  ex- 
clusively individual  and  subjective;  but  where  there 
is  no  universality  or  objectivity  there  can  be  no  knowl- 
edge or  intelligibility.  To  accept  sensation  alone  as 
the  foundation  of  knowledge,  or  knowledge  to  be 
merely  transformed  or  associated  sensations,  is  en- 
tirely to  betray  the  cause  of  knowledge. 

Having  already,  however,  had  to  some  extent  to 
deal  with  agnosticism  as  to  reason,  and  as  I  must  nec- 
essarily have  it  further  under  consideration  in  the 
chapters  which  follow,  I  shall  not  dwell  on  it  here. 

In  the  next  chapter  I  shall  enter  on  the  considera- 
tion of  that  group  of  forms  of  agnosticism  which 
directly  refer  to  the  objects  of  Jcnowledge. 


334 


CHAPTER   VII 

PARTIAL  OR  LIMITED  AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO 
ULTIMATE   OBJECTS  OF  KNOWLEDGE 

There  are  forms  of  agnosticism  distinguished  from 
one  another  by  the  objects  to  which  they  refer.  In 
so  far  as  distinct  from  and  exclusive  of  one  another 
they  are  necessarily  of  a  partial  and  limited  nature, 
and  as  such  they  must,  like  the  forms  of  mitigated 
or  modified  agnosticism,  not  only  fail  to  realise  but 
must  contravene  and  contradict  the  ideal  of  agnosti- 
cism, which,  as  we  have  seen,  must  be  arbitrary  and 
inconsistent  unless  unlimited  and  universal.  What 
Sextus  Empiricus  said  of  scepticism  holds  true  of 
agnosticism:  it  should  not  be  the  belief  of  a  school 
or  sect,  or  a  definite  doctrine  as  to  anything,  but  is 
"  a  certain  line  of  reasoning,"  an  070)777  or  move- 
ment, the  8vva/ii<i  of  so  opposing  in  every  way  the 
appearances  of  sense  and  arguments  of  intelligence 
to  each  other  as  to  produce  by  their  equilibrium  sus- 
pension of  judgment.  Agnosticism  thus  understood 
is  a  potentiality  of  which  all  the  actual  manifesta- 
tions must  be  self-contradictory.  That  that  is  not 
an  inaccurate  view  of  it  has,  I  trust,  already  been 
sufficiently  shown. 

It  may  be  thought  that  as  the  forms  of  agnosticism 
now  to  be  considered  derive  what  is  distinctive  of 
them  from  their  relationship  to  the  objects  of  knowl- 

335 


PARTIAL    OR    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

edge,  our  first  question  regarding  them  should  be, 
What  are  the  objects  to  which  all  real  or  supposed 
knowledge  may  be  reduced,  and  with  reference  to 
which  all  partial  forms  of  agnosticism  may  be  dis- 
tributed? There  is  a  question,  however,  prior  even 
to  that.  It  is  the  question,  Under  what  conditions, 
or  by  what  right,  do  those  who  advocate  a  partial 
agnosticism,  a  scepticism  incomplete  as  regards  ex- 
tension, draw  limitations  as  to  the  sphere  of  knowl- 
edge? This  is  a  question,  it  seems  to  me,  which 
agnostics  have  generally  neglected  altogether  or 
answered  only  in  an  arbitrary  and  dogmatic  manner. 
Yet  all  agnosticism  seems  to  depend  on  it.  What 
is  its  theory  of  knowledge?  How  has  it  got  it?  How 
has  it  attained  a  theory  of  knowledge  which  can  war- 
rant it  to  assign  limits  to  knowledge,  and  say  thus 
far  but  no  farther?  here  man  may  search  but  there 
he  ought  not?  matter  is  knowable  but  not  mind? 
the  ways  of  man  may  be  traced  but  not  those  of  God? 
At  present  I  require  only  to  consider  the  preliminary 
question  of  method.  How  may  such  a  theory  of 
knowledge  be  obtained  as  will  warrant  any  limita- 
tion of  the  sphere  of  knowledge? 

I.    ON    ASSIGNING    LIMITS    TO    KNOWLEDGE 

The  limits  of  knowledge  cannot  be  laid  down  in  an 
a  priori  manner.  There  is  no  useful  theorising  on- 
knowledge  possible  apart  from  knowledge.  It  is  pre- 
sumptuous to  warn  intelligence  off  from  investiga- 
tion in  any  direction  until  we  have  informed  our- 
selves that  in  that  direction  there  is  nothing  for  it 
to  investigate.     We  have  no  right  to  affirm  that  any 

336 


NOT   TO   BE   ASCERTAINED   A   PRIORI 

question  which  the  mind  can  seriously  ask,  with- 
out manifest  self-contradiction,  may  not  be  found 
answerable,  until  we  have  learned  that  all  rational 
ways  of  answering  it  have  been  exhausted.  We  do 
not  require  to  deny — we  are  not  entitled  to  deny — 
that  there  are  a  priori  limits  or  conditions  of  knowl- 
edge; but  we  are  bound  to  deny  the  legitimacy  of 
theorising  on  knowledge  without  knowledge,  and 
without  study  of  the  various  kinds  of  knowledge  and 
of  methods  of  investigation. 

Further,  we  cannot  hope  to  ascertain  the  limits 
of  knowledge  by  a  mere  critique  of  the  powers  of 
knowledge.  We  cannot  measure  the  range  of  our 
mental  tether  by  simply  taking  an  introspective  view 
of  it.  No  mere  psychological  analysis  of  the  consti- 
tution of  the  intellect  will  enable  us  to  trace  the 
bounds  of  its  competency.  When,  indeed,  the  laws 
of  the  intellect  are  violated  truth  cannot  be  attained, 
but  to  know  that,  and  to  know  and  conform  to  the 
laws  of  the  intellect,  is  not  to  know  how  much  truth 
may  be  attained,  how  far  intellect  may  advance  in  its 
quest  after  knowledge.  Everything  at  least  that  man 
does  know  he  can  know.  Any  estimate  of  man's  power 
to  know  which  leaves  out  of  account  what  he  actually 
knows  must  be  an  erroneous  one.  Hence  the  ques- 
tion, \yhat  do  we  know  ?  should  precede  the  question, 
What  can  we  know  ?  The  positive  grounds  adduced 
in  proof  of  knowledge  ought  never  to  be  set  aside  or 
left  unexamined  because  some  general  theory  of 
knowledge  has  ignored  them.  No  theory  of  knowl- 
edge is  universally  valid  which  does  not  apply  to 
every  instance  or  fact  of  knowledge ;  and  consequent- 

337 


PAETIAL   OR   LIMITED   AGNOSTICISM 

ly  it  is  vain  to  appeal  to  any  theory  of  knowledge 
against  positive  evidence  for  knowledge. 

Epistemology  is  the  department  of  philosophy 
which  undertakes  to  provide  us  with  a  theory  of 
knowledge.  It  is  concerned,  therefore,  not  merely 
with  some  but  with  all  knowledge,  with  knowledge 
as  such  in  its  entirety  and  universality,  seeing  that 
to  attain  a  true  and  complete  theory  of  anything  an 
accurate  and  full  knowledge  of  that  thing  is  the 
indispensable  condition.  Epistemology  as  the  theory 
of  knowledge  should  be  essentially  vorjai^  vorjaeaxi, 
and  ought  to  seek  to  become  the  complete  theory  of 
knowledge.  But  that  it  cannot  become  if  it  overlook 
or  do  injustice  to  any  kind  of  knowledge.  To  deny 
to  be  science  anything  which  professes  to  be  so  with- 
out an  adequate  examination  of  what  it  presents  as 
proof  of  its  claim  is  just  the  fault  which  epistemology 
is  most  bound  to  avoid,  and  which  it  can  least  com- 
mit without  discrediting  itself  and  showing  its  incon- 
sistency. Epistemology  is  not  entitled  to  lay  down 
as  conditions  or  limits  of  knowledge  what  are  merely 
conditions  or  limits  of  some  kind  or  kinds  of  knowl- 
edge, or  to  represent  as  an  essential  characteristic 
of  knowledge  any  feature  merely  distinctive  of  a 
species  of  knowledge.  It  has  no  right  to  pronounce 
any  form  of  knowledge  not  to  be  truly  knowledge 
because  the  objects  thereof  are  very  unlike  those  of 
some  other  forms  of  knowledge.  Its  duty  is  studi- 
ously to  trace,  not  arbitrarily  to  prescribe,  the  limits 
of  knowledge,  l^o  special  kind  of  knowledge  is  en- 
titled to  exemption  from  its  criticism,  but  every  kind 
of  knowledge  is  entitled  to  receive  from  it  full  jus- 

338 


PROPER    FUNCTION    OF    EPISTEMOLOGY 

tice.  Whatever  claims  to  be  knowledge  should  have 
its  claims  fairly  examined,  and  should  not  he  set  aside 
as  pseudo-science  in  misplaced  confidence  on  any  su- 
perficial generalisation  or  dogmatic  assumption  as  to 
what  Is  and  what  is  not  knowledge.  Hence  episte- 
mological  theory  cannot  of  itself  warrant  us  to  pro- 
nounce physiology,  for  example,  a  real  science  and 
psychology  a  pretended  one,  sense-perception  a  fac- 
ulty of  knowledge  but  apprehension  of  the  Divine  an 
allusion,  phenomena  within  and  noumena  without  the 
sphere  of  cognition,  &c.  Every  such  theory  so  ap- 
plied is  itself  an  example  of  pseudo-science,  for  the 
obvious  reason  that  it  refuses  to  investigate  what  pre- 
sents itself  as  appropriate  evidence,  and  limits  knowl- 
edge by  an  altogether  inappropriate  sort  of  standard. 

Obvious  as  the  truth  of  the  foregoing  remarks 
should  appear,  it  has  often  been  overlooked  and  con- 
travened; and  by  none  more  so  than  by  those  who 
have  most  loudly  professed  to  be  "  scientific  think- 
ers "  and  "  critical  philosophers."  Thus  Comtists 
have  denied  theology,  metaphysics,  and  metageome- 
try  to  be  knowledge,  for  no  better  reason  than  that 
a  crude  historical  generalisation,  the  so-called  "  law 
of  the  three  states,"  required  them  to  do  so;  and 
Kantians  have  made  not  less  reckless  applications  of 
their  unintelligible  distinction  between  phenomena 
and  noumena.  Such  a  method  of  procedure  is  the 
very  reverse  of  either  "  critical  "  or  "  scientific." 

Prof.  A.  Sabbatier  has  said:  "  There  is  no  serious 
philosophy  to-day  which  does  not  start  with  a  theory 
of  knowledge."  ^    The  statement  may,  perhaps,  be  so 

>  The  words  which  introduce  his  Essai  sur  la  connaissance  reli- 
gieuse. 

339 


PARTIAL   OR   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

understood  as  to  be  true  and  important.  But  it  re- 
quires the  following  qualifying  statement,  which  is 
neither  less  true  nor  less  important.  There  is  no 
philosophy  entitled  to  he  considered  serious  which 
does  not  start  in  the  formation  of  its  theory  of  knowl- 
edge with  an  impartial  study  of  the  contents  and 
grounds  of  whatever  professes  to  he  knowledge.  No 
serious  philosophy  will  place  such  confidence  in  any 
general  epistemological  theory  as  to  deny  to  be  knowl- 
edge anything  which  seriously  professes  to  be  knowl- 
edge, and  seriously  adduces  evidence  in  proof  of  the 
profession,  until  it  has  found  the  alleged  evidence  ir- 
relevant or  insufficient.  A  theory  of  knowledge  must 
be  judged  of  by  knowledge,  not  knowledge  by  the 
theory.  Precedence  must  be  given  not  to  the  theory 
but  to  the  knowledge.  And  the  knowledge  can  only 
be  substantiated  by  appropriate  and  sufficient  evi- 
dence, relevant  and  adequate  reasons. 

Almost  all  partial  agnosticism  has  arisen  from  a 
narrow  view  of  knowledge,  and  has  justified  itself 
by  exclusive  reliance  on  knowledge  of  a  particular 
kind.  Thus  there  is  a  partial  agnosticism  in  the  form 
of  scepticism  as  to  philosophy.  Those  whose  agnos- 
ticism is  thus  limited  regard  all  philosophy  as  if  it 
were  "  falsely  so  called."  Hence,  naturally,  they  do 
not  profess  to  justify  it  in  the  name  of  philosophy, 
or  by  the  aid  of  a  rival  philosophy.  They  do  not 
pretend  to  found  a  system  or  school  of  philosophy 
of  their  own  to  prove  to  themselves  and  others  that 
there  is  no  philosophy,  and  that  all  profession  of  it 
is  an  empty  boast;  but  are  content  to  attack  the  ob- 
ject of  their  aversion  in  the  name  of  theology,  or  of 

340 


SCEPTICISM   AS   TO   PHILOSOPHY 

physical  and  mental  science,  or  of  what  they  call 
common-sense.  They  thus  reject  the  teaching  of 
philosophy  as  sophistry  without  examination  of  the 
evidence  for  its  truth,  because  of  its  unlikeness  to 
what  they  are  accustomed  to  accept  as  knowledge. 
And  obviously  that  is  a  most  unreasonable  proced- 
ure. It  is  not  otherwise  with  religious  agnosticism, 
scepticism  as  to  spiritual  truth.  Doubt  as  to  the 
rational  validity  of  all  religious  convictions  and 
theological  doctrines  has  been  very  frequently  based 
mainly  or  wholly  on  their  unlikeness  to  the  findings 
of  positive,  or  even  physical,  science,  and  the  differ- 
ence of  the  methods  by  which  they  are  respectively 
attained.  Doubt  of  such  a  kind  rests  on  a  most  inse- 
cure foundation.  Man  is  spirit  as  well  as  flesh,  and 
his  perceptions  are  not  limited  to  those  of  the  eyes, 
ears,  and  other  bodily  senses,  nor  are  his  inferences 
only  reliable  within  the  sphere  of  empirical  research. 
Physical  science  is  not  the  only  type  or  exclusive 
standard  of  science.  To  confine  either  knowledge  or 
science  within  such  limits  as  "  sense-perception," 
"  mental  picturing,"  or  "  experimental  verification," 
admits  of  no  rational  justification. 

Physical  science,  it  should  be  remembered,  once 
suffered  from  the  same  narrow  and  exclusive  method 
of  judging  which  many  of  its  votaries  would  now 
apply  to  other  departments  of  knowledge.  In  Hindu 
philosophies,  and  in  the  speculations  of  thinkers  like 
Plato  and  Plotinus,  matter  received  scant  justice. 
During  the  dominancy  of  theology  in  medieval 
times  physical  science  was  neglected,  and  the  physi- 
cal world  itself  viewed  as  a  degraded  and  disorderly 

341 


PAETIAL    OK   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

thing,  not  a  revelation  of  law  and  truth,  but  such 
"  stuff  as  dreams  are  made  of,"  a  delusion  and  a 
snare.  Now  it  has  not  only  fully  attained  its  rights 
but  has  often  much  more  attributed  to  it  than  is  its 
due.  It  is  spoken  of  as  if  it  were  alone  science,  and 
as  if  there  were  hardly  any  other  knowledge  prop- 
erly so  called.  That  is  to  ascribe  to  it  a  most  exag- 
gerated value  and  authority,  and  should  be  treated 
as  what  it  is,  a  mischievous  modern  form  of  super- 
stition. The  knowledge  attained  through  mere  sense 
is  knowledge  which  we  share  in  common  with  the 
lower  animals,  and  which  only  does  for  us  what  it  does 
for  them,  namely,  enables  us  to  provide  for  our 
bodily  wants  and  to  guard  against  bodily  dangers. 
It  does  not  take  us  beyond  the  mere  surface  even 
of  material  things,  or  show  us  exactly  their  proper- 
ties and  relations,  unless  guided  and  supplemented 
by  reason,  aided  by  all  the  other  intellectual  powers, 
furnished  with  artificial  instruments,  and  following 
the  methods  of  research  which  experience  has  proved 
to  be  appropriate.  And  even  then  it  only  helps  us 
to  make  a  better  acquaintance  with  our  material  sur- 
roundings. It  solves  none  of  the  mysteries  of  our 
own  natures,  and  still  less  those  of  the  nature,  source, 
and  ends  of  universal  being.  Physical  science  can 
supply  material  for  a  theory  of  knowledge,  but  it 
cannot  yield  a  theory  of  knowledge,  and  has  no  right 
to  lay  down  the  limits  of  knowledge.  It  is  not  for 
it  to  deal  with  what  is  greatest  in  existence  and  con- 
cerns us  most  in  life.  A  mere  physicist's  thoughts 
on  "  the  riddles  of  existence  "  are  seldom  of  much 
value.    Although  philosophy  and  theology  are  bound 

342 


SCEPTICISM   AS   TO   PHYSICAL   SCIENCE 

not  to  contradict  physical  science  they  are  equally 
bound  not  to  be  subject  to  it.  A  philosophy  or 
theology  judged  from  the  standpoint  of  physical 
science  must  be  a  philosophy  or  theology  misjudged. 

It  is  obviously  a  part  of  the  proper  work  of  philos- 
ophy to  provide  a  theory  of  knowledge.  For  what- 
ever else  philosophy  may  be  occupied  with  it  is  occu- 
pied with  knowledge  as  no  other  kind  of  thought 
or  any  special  science  is.  Ordinary  thought  is  not 
reflection  on  knowledge  or  criticism  of  knowledge. 
Every  special  science  is  a  particular  kind  of  knowl- 
edge and  has  a  limited  province  of  knowledge.  Phi- 
losophy alone  has  all  knowledge  for  its  province,  and 
is  also,  at  least  in  idea,  the  highest  kind  of  thought. 
But  philosophy  cannot  evolve  a  theory  of  knowledge 
out  of  pure  thought,  and,  of  course,  not  out  of  the 
mere  ignorance  which  is  what  is  often  meant  by  pure 
thought.  It  cannot,  any  more  than  ordinary  or  sci- 
entific thinking,  build  without  bricks,  and  without 
even  the  constituents  of  which  bricks  are  made,  as 
a  Spinoza,  Fichte,  and  Schelling  so  often  sought  to 
compel  it  to  do.  It  has  to  educe  its  epistemology, 
reflectively  and  critically,  from  study  of  the  opera- 
tions of  the  laws  of  thought  and  of  the  evidence  for 
all  kinds  of  knowledge;  or,  in  other  words,  from  all 
the  truth  attained  by  humanity  through  all  the  means 
of  discovery  at  its  disposal. 

Philosophy  in  treating  of  the  theory  of  knowledge 
has  to  presuppose  ordinary  knowledge  and  the  special 
positive  sciences.  The  latter  do  not  presuppose  phi- 
losophy and  have  not  originated  in  any  philosophical 
theory  of  knowledge.     They  are  the  products  of  a 

343 


PARTIAL   OR   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

reason  which  has  been  directly  occupied  with  definite 
kinds  of  given  questions  and  objects.  The  scientist 
is  content  to  confine  his  researches  within  a  defi- 
nitely limited  department  of  nature,  and  to  follow 
the  methods  which  he  finds  to  be  most  successful 
therein.  He  does  not  require  to  assume  a  general 
theory  of  knowledge  before  proceeding  with  his  own 
special  work.  Philosophy,  it  must  be  added,  has  not 
as  yet  done  nearly  as  much  as  it  ought  to  provide 
scientists  with  a  trustworthy  and  helpful  doctrine  of 
science.  It  can  only  do  so  by  taking  adequate  ac- 
count of  the  results  and  methods  of  the  sciences,  so 
as  to  be  able  to  make  clearly  and  explicitly  conscious 
to  scientists  what  they  had  already  possessed,  but 
only  in  a  more  or  less  vaguely  implicit  and  uncon- 
scious condition.  In  order  to  determine  what  can  be 
known  it  must,  in  all  ways  appropriate  to  philosophy, 
make  itself  acquainted  with  what  is  known,  how  it 
has  become  known,  and  what  is  its  place  and  worth 
in  the  world  as  known.  The  philosopher  who,  with- 
out a  knowledge  of  mathematics,  undertakes  to  as- 
sign its  limits  and  prescribe  its  methods,  shows  arro- 
gant ignorance.  He  must  conform  his  epistemology 
to  mathematics,  not  mathematics  to  an  epistemology 
which  has  taken  no  serious  account  of  it.  The  same 
holds  good  as  to  the  relation  of  all  other  sciences  to 
philosophy.  And  this  is  now  generally  admitted  as 
regards  most  of  the  sciences.  The  philosopher  as  an 
epistemologist  does  not  venture  to  deny  them  to  be 
sciences,  although  he  may  often  fail  to  show  as  satis- 
factorily as  he  ought  that  they  are  so,  and  why  they 
are  so.     The  epistemology  of  philosophers  is  very 

344 


PHILOSOPHY   AND   EPISTEMOLOGY 

frequently  exceedingly  vague  and  worthless,  for  the 
obvious  reason  that  philosophers  often  know  exceed- 
ingly little,  and  that  little  not  firmly  or  clearly. 
Philosophy  to  provide  a  true  theory  of  knowledge 
must  itself  have  acquired  much  knowledge  of  every 
kind, — attained  thorough  insight  into  the  distinctive 
characteristics  of  all  the  sciences,  into  the  rationale 
of  their  processes,  their  actual  internal  logic,  and 
their  organic  connections.  It  must  be  worthy  to  be 
called  the  scientia  scientiarum. 

Philosophers  now  seldom  assume  too  sceptical  an 
attitude  towards  either  the  demonstrative  or  the  posi- 
tive sciences.  As  regards  the  former,  mathematicians 
can  easily  protect  themselves,  and  are  fully  aware 
that  only  competent  mathematicians  can  philosophise 
with  advantage  on  the  nature  of  mathematical  knowl- 
edge, or  on  the  interrelations,  distinctive  functions, 
and  special  relations  of  the  various  mathematical 
sciences.  Hence  their  territories  are  not  invaded 
and  overrun  by  vague  and  pretentious  theorists.  As 
regards  the  physical  sciences,  the  great  majority  of 
persons  who  take  any  interest  in  philosophy  are  too 
credulous.  They  are  too  apt  to  accept  as  science  all 
that  physicists  say,  as  certain  what  they  merely  con- 
jecture, and  as  "scientific"  or  "non-scientific"  what- 
ever they  so  designate.  That  is,  of  course,  a  very 
unphilosophical  attitude.  There  is  no  genuine  phi- 
losophy where  there  is  no  free  philosophical  criticism 
and  a  sufiiciency  of  knowledge  to  make  such  criti- 
cism possible.  To  the  psychological  sciences  less 
favour  is  shown.  Philosophers  with  a  materialistic 
or  empirical  creed  naturally  "  crib,  cabin,  and  con- 

345 


PAETIAL    OE   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

fine  "  psychology  so  as  to  make  it  conform  in  all 
directions  to  their  creed.  The  dogmatism  in  their 
metaphysical  principles  reveals  itself  as  scepticism  in 
their  psychological  assumptions. 

It  is  the  theological  sciences,  however,  which  are 
treated  most  sceptically  and  with  least  modesty  and 
equity.  Many  who  presume  to  speak  with  authority 
in  the  name  of  philosophy  on  the  limits  of  knowledge 
affirm  as  a  truth  which  requires  no  proof,  or  as  one 
which  philosophy  has  itself  demonstrated,  that  there 
is  no  religious  truth,  no  theological  science.  They 
propound  theories  of  knowledge  which  represent  re- 
ligion as  outside  of  the  sphere  of  knowledge,  and  do 
80  with  very  inadequate  examination  of  its  contents 
and  evidences.  They  pronounce  theological  sciences 
or  disciplines,  which  they  have  scarcely,  if  at  all,  ex- 
amined, not  to  be  scientific  studies.  The  injustice 
of  the  procedure  is  obvious,  and  yet  it  is  very  com- 
mon. Well  might  Prof.  Veitch  say  of  the  kind  of 
epistemology  to  which  I  refer,  the  kind  which  is  so 
frequently  applied  to  the  prejudice  of  religion:  "I 
distinctly  object  to  what  is  called  the  Theory  of 
Knowledge,  if  this  be  not  preceded  by  a  thorough 
examination  and  analysis  of  what  we  do  as  a  matter 
of  fact  know,  in  and  by  consciousness  in  all  its  forms, 
— from  Sense-Perception,  through  Memory,  Imagi- 
nation, Thinking — including  concepts,  judgments, 
reasonings — up  even  to  that  side  of  our  conscious- 
ness which  is  conversant  with  what  we  call  the  In- 
finite, the  Absolute,  the  Unconditioned,  the  Divine. 
If,  for  example,  we  start  simply  with  the  knowledge 
we  get  in  Sense-Perception,  and  draw  out  its  con- 

346 


CLAIMS  OF  THEOLOGY 

ditions  and  laws,  and  then  carry  them  all  through 
our  knowledge  as  its  laws,  we  shall  make  the  blunder 
of  limiting  knowledge  to  a  single,  and  perhaps  com- 
paratively insignificant,  portion  of  its  sphere.  The 
laws  of  our  knowing  the  object  in  time  and  space  are 
not  necessarily  the  laws  of  our  knowing  all  objects."^ 
Those  who  profess  to  have  religious  knowledge 
are  not  less  bound  than  those  who  profess  to  have  any 
other  kind  of  knowledge  to  prove  the  truth  of  what 
they  profess.  Those  who  regard  theology  as  religious 
science  have  no  right  to  claim  for  their  theology  im- 
munity from  any  truly  rational  criticism  or  inde- 
pendence of  any  truly  rational  philosophy;  no  such 
right  as  those  who  are  content  to  accept  religion  as 
guaranteed  by  mere  feeling,  faith,  or  authority  have 
demanded  for  it.  Theology  is  not  entitled  as  knowl- 
edge or  science  to  be  judged  with  exceptional  favour 
or  laxity  because  religious,  but  only  to  be  treated 
with  the  same  fairness  and  reasonableness  as  other 
forms  of  inquiry  and  reflection.  Common  justice  is 
all  to  which  it  has  a  right;  but  to  that  it  is  entitled, 
and  that  is  what  it  frequently  fails  to  receive.  Many 
Venture,  without  examining  its  own  direct  and  in- 
trinsic evidences,  to  declare  it  neither  knowledge  nor 
science  on  the  ground  that  it  is  inconsistent  with 
some  general  theory  or  other  of  knowledge.  They 
thus  venture  to  deal  with  it  otherwise  than  they  dare 
to  deal  with  any  other  department  of  knowledge. 
That  is  an  altogether  unfair  and  illogical  procedure. 
It  is  the  main  reason  why  theologians  require  to  take 
more  notice  of  theories  of  knowledge  than  physicists, 

>  Knowing  and  Being^  p.  3. 

347 


PARTIAL   OR   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

say,  need  to  do.  Physicists,  as  a  rule,  do  not  trouble 
themselves  about  theories  of  knowledge.  They  take 
it  for  granted,  and  can  afford  to  do  so,  that  no  one 
will  dare,  in  the  name  of  an  epistemology,  to  set  at 
nought  and  refuse  to  look  at  the  evidence  which  they 
adduce  for  their  findings  as  to  physical  things.  Theo- 
logians cannot  act  so  because  they  are  not  equally  sure 
of  fair  treatment.  They  have  to  consider  that  there 
are  professed  philosophers  with  an  anti-theological 
bias  who  seek  to  arrest  their  inquiries  and  reject  their 
findings  with  epistemological  hypotheses.  In  those 
circumstances  theologians  little  versed  in  philosophy 
may  rightfully  insist  on  pursuing  their  own  labours 
and  holding  to  their  own  conclusions  so  long  as  they 
are  not  met  on  their  own  ground  and  their  own 
reasons  are  not  weighed;  and  those  of  them  who  are 
competently  conversant  with  it  may  further  venture 
to  criticise  any  epistemology  to  which  their  adver- 
saries appeal. 

There  are  some  truths  regarding  the  limitation  of 
knowledge  which  must  not  here  be  left  wholly  unin- 
dicated. 

1.  No  object  of  belief  or  thought,  not  evidently 
self-contradictory,  should  be  assumed  to  be  unknow- 
able. It  may  just  as  rationally  be  assumed  to  be 
knowable.  It  is  no  less  incumbent  to  give  reasons 
for  holding  any  conceivable  object  or  proposition 
unknowable  than  for  holding  it  knowable.  There  is 
as  much  demand  for  evidence  for  the  denial  as  for 
the  assertion  of  cognoscibility.  A  man  who  says  that 
God  is  unknowable  is  under  as  much  obligation  to 
justify  the  statement  as  the  man  is  who  says  God 

348 


LIMITATIONS  OF  KNOWLEDGE 

may  be  known.  The  only  difference  between  them 
is  that  the  man  who  says  God  is  unknowable  has 
much  the  more  difficult  proposition  to  prove.  A 
negative  proposition,  unless  it  involve  a  manifest 
.  self-contradiction,  is  always  more  difficult  to  prove 
than  an  affirmative  one.  There  are  persons,  how- 
ever, and  agnostics  are  very  frequently  of  the  num- 
ber, who  seem  to  think  that  only  knowableness  re- 
quires to  be  proved,  and  that  unknowableness  may 
be  assumed  without  evidence. 

2.  All  that  we  have  reason  to  believe  real  we  have 
also  reason  to  believe  knowable.  Much  that  is  real 
may  be  unknowable  to  us;  yet  so  far  from  being 
unknowable  to  us  because  it  is  real,  in  so  far  as  we 
have  any  good  reason  to  believe  it  real  we  have  also 
reason  to  believe  it  knowable.  It  is  the  unreal  which 
is  necessarily  unknowable,  for  it  is  no  object  of 
thought  at  all.  One  cannot  prove  anything  about 
nothing;  one  cannot  prove  to  exist  what  does  not 
exist.  The  unreal  is  the  negative  at  once  of  the 
real  and  the  knowable.  Existence  and  knowableness 
— reality,  truth,  and  proveability — are  coincident  and 
inseparable.  In  the  Absolute  Reality,  with  which 
philosophy  and  theology  are  alike  concerned  al- 
though in  different  ways,  there  can  be  no  darkness, 
no  unintelligibility,  at  all.  Itself  must  fully  know 
itself.  To  say  that  the  world,  the  soul,  or  God  is, 
yet  cannot  he  known,  is  a  statement  both  presumptu- 
ous and  nonsensical.  So  far  as  anything  really  is 
it  is  knowable  through  the  manifestation  of  what  it 
really  is. 

3.  It  seems  erroneous  to  suppose  that  we  can  draw 

349 


PAETIAL    OK   LIMITED   AGNOSTICISM 

definite  objective  lines  of  demarcation  between  the 
knowable  and  the  unknowable.  We  may  draw  lines 
between  the  known  and  the  unknown,  and  it  is  highly 
desirable  to  draw  such  lines  when  we  can,  and  as 
distinctly  as  possible.  It  is  the  characteristic  of  an 
accurate  and  careful  thinker  to  distinguish  as  pre- 
cisely as  he  can  between  what  he  does  and  does  not 
know;  and  to  do  so  is  always  a  forward  step  in  a 
man's  pursuit  of  knowledge.  But  it  is  at  once  a 
mark  of  mental  confusion  and  a  perverse  exercise  of 
ingenuity  to  attempt  to  trace  the  external  or  objec- 
tive boundaries  of  rational  research, — to  draw  lines 
in  the  outward  universe  beyond  which  all  must  be  a 
terra  incognita  and  within  which  all  is  explicable. 
Dr.  Bithell — an  agnostic  writer  to  whom  I  have  al- 
ready had  occasion  to  refer — declares  his  inability 
to  understand  this  objection  to  his  agnosticism,  and 
ventures  to  affirm  that  "  the  line  of  demarcation  be- 
tween the  knowable  and  the  unknowable  is  at  least 
as  sliarp  and  clear  as  the  mathematical  line  which 
separates  two  plane  surfaces."  ^  Indeed !  There  is 
no  difficulty  in  drawing — in  mentally  realising — a 
clear  and  sharp  line  of  demarcation  between  the 
hnown  and  the  known,  especially  when  both  knowns 
are  of  the  same  nature.  But  is  it  as  easy  to  draw  such 
a  line  between  the  known  arid  the  unknown?  Cer- 
tainly not.  For  the  ordinary  human  intellect  there 
is  no  clear  and  sharp  line  of  distinction  like  a  mathe- 
matical one  between  those  two.  Their  boundaries  are 
continually  changing  and  commonly  very  indistinct. 
But  what  Dr.  Bithell,  with  "  a  light  heart,"  ventures 

1  Agnostic  Problems,  p.  3. 
350 


LIMITATIONS  OF  KNOWLEDGE 

to  undertake  is  a  far  more  difficult  task  than  to  fix  the 
boundaries  between  the  known  and  unknown ;  it  is  to 
draw  a  line  as  clear  and  sharp  as  if  it  were  a  mathe- 
matical one  between  two  unknowns,  and  one  of  which 
is  not  only  unknown  but  unknowable.  That  I  vent- 
ure to  think  must  be  a  problem  which  no  finite  being 
can  solve.  Dr.  Bithell  has  certainly  not  solved  it  hj 
telling  us  that  "  the  line  of  demarcation  between  the 
Ivnowable  and  the  Unknowable  may  be  defined  as 
that  which  separates  those  phenomena  that  come 
within  the  range  of  consciousness  from  those  facts  or 
truths  which  lie  beyond  the  reach  of  consciousness."  ^ 
That  is  only  equivalent  to  saying  that  we  know  what 
we  know  and  cannot  know  what  we  cannot  know, — 
a  truism  which  defines  and  distinguishes  nothing,  and 
is  of  no  value  whatever.  Dr.  Bithell  represents  Kant 
and  Ferrier  as  having  taught  to  the  same  effect  as 
himself,  but  the  two  quotations  (p.  5)  adduced  in 
proof  are  to  quite  a  different  effect.  There  is  no  war- 
rant in  the  history  of  philosophy  for  his  statement 
that  "  philosophers,  generally,  are  pretty  well  agreed 
in  making  consciousness  the  line  of  demarcation  be- 
tween the  Knowable  and  the  Unknowable."  I  am 
not  aware  of  any  philosopher  of  eminence  having 
come  to  such  a  pass  as  that.  Philosophers,  generally, 
are  pretty  well  agreed,  I  think,  that  to  draw  a  line  of 
demarcation  between  the  Knowable  and  the  Unknow- 
able is  impossible ;  that  there  is  absurdity — self-con- 
tradiction— in  the  very  attempt ;  that  to  draw  such  a 
line  we  must  have  already  done  what  we  affirm  to  be 
impossible — ^known  the  unkno^vable;  that  we  cannot 
•  Agnostic  Problems,  p.  4. 
351 


PARTIAL   OR   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

draw  a  boundary  unless  we  see  over  it,  or,  as  Hegel 
says, — "  No  one  is  aware  that  anything  is  a  limit  or 
defect  until  at  the  same  time  he  is  above  and  beyond 

it." 

4.  The  only  ascertainable  limitations  of  the  mind 
manifesting  itself  as  reason — i.e.,  in  the  appropria- 
tion of  knowledge  and  truth — are  those  which  are 
inherent  in  its  own  constitution.  They  are  subjective 
not  objective  limitations.  They  are  inherent  in  and 
constitutive  of  intelligence.  Reason — the  mind  as 
cognitive  or  rational — has  its  limits  in  its  own  laws. 
To  discover,  state,  and  expound  those  laws  is  the 
business  of  Epistemology  or  Theory  of  Knowledge, 
which  is  intimately  connected  with  Psychology, 
Formal  Logic,  and  Methodology.  The  laws  of  rea- 
son— laws  of  intuition,  evidence,  and  inference — are 
manifestly  not  external  boundaries,  but  they  are  the 
only  discoverable  expressions  of  the  Divine  "  Thus 
far."  So  long  as  reason  conforms  to  its  own  laws 
it  cannot  go  too  far.  When  it  does  not  conform  to 
them  it  ceases  to  be  reason  and  becomes  unreason. 
Reason  is  entitled  to  examine  any  and  every  thing 
which  comes  under  its  notice,  and  cannot  push 
examination  too  far  so  long  as  it  remains  reason. 
Only  when  it  violates  some  law  or  laws  of  its  own 
has  it  gone  too  far, — has  it  erred  and  strayed, — and 
then  simply  because  it  has  ceased  to  be  rational. 
Does  the  agnostic  say  that  that  may  be  true  of 
reason  and  its  sphere  the  Knowable,  but  that  beyond 
them  there  are  faith  and  its  sphere  the  Unknowable, 
and  that  "  he  is  prepared  to  work  on  both  sides  of 
the  line  of  demarcation?    On  the  side  of  the  Know- 

352 


LIMITATIONS  OF  KNOWLEDGE 

able  he  founds  and  cultivates  his  Science;  on  the 
side  of  the  Unknowable  he  finds  an  illimitable  arena 
for  the  exercise  of  Belief  and  Faith."  ^  Reason  and 
Belief  or  Faith,  however,  cannot  be  so  separated. 
Where  there  is  no  reason  or  knowledge  there  should 
be  no  belief  or  faith.  In  the  Unknowable  there  is 
no  arena  for  the  exercise  of  a  reasonable  belief  or 
an  honest  faith.  All  that  the  mind  can  do  on  the 
side  of  the  L^nknowable  is  to  play  at  make-belief, 
to  feign  faith,  to  worship  nothingness.  Such  exercise 
must  be  both  intellectually  and  morally  a  very  dan- 
gerous sort  of  exertion.    Madness  that  way  lies. 

5.  Knowledge  is  limited  by  evidence.  We  lack 
knowledge  of  what  we  have  not  suificient  evidence 
for.  Nothing,  however,  sufficiently  proved  by  evi- 
dence of  any  kind  is  to  be  rejected  because  it  cannot 
be  proved  by  evidence  of  another  kind.  Demonstra- 
tion is  the  proof  appropriate  in  mathematics,  but  it 
is  a  kind  of  proof  which  one  has  no  right  to  demand 
in  psychology,  ethics,  or  history,  or  even  in  the  phys- 
ical sciences.  Proof,  and  thoroughly  satisfactory 
proof  too,  has  many  forms.  Hence  the  words  prove 
and  proof  have  necessarily  many  variations  of  signi- 
fication. Agnostics  often  make  an  abusive  applica- 
tion of  that  fact.  Their  favourite  quotation  is  drawn 
from  Tennyson's  Ancient  Sage: — 

"  Thou  canst  not  prove  the  Nameless,  O  my  son. 
Nor  canst  thou  prove  the  world  thou  movest  in, 
Thou  canst  not  prove  that  thou  art  body  alone, 
Nor  canst  thou  prove  that  thou  art  spirit  alone, 
Nor  canst  thou  prove  that  thou  art  both  in  one  : 
Thou  canst  not  prove  thou  art  immortal,  no 

» Bithell,  Agnostic  Problems^  p.  17. 
353 


PAETIAL    OE    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

Nor  yet  that  thou  art  mortal — nay,  my  son, 

Thou  canst  not  prove  that  I,  who  speak  with  thee, 

Am  not  thyself  in  converse  with  thyself. 

For  nothing  worthy  proving  can  be  proven. 

Nor  yet  disproven  :  wherefore  thou  be  wise, 

Cleave  ever  to  the  sunnier  side  of  doubt, 

And  cling  to  Faith  beyond  the  forms  of  Faith  !  " 

These  lines  are  very  beautiful,  and  perhaps  precise 
enough  for  the  poet's  purpose,  but  they  have  no 
claim  to  be  regarded  as  a  correct  expression  of  a 
true  philosophical  creed.  The  "  Nameless  "  is  the 
Being  who  has  been  named  more  or  less  aptly  in 
all  the  languages  of  the  earth,  and  who  has  been 
almost  universally  recognised  by  mankind  as  the 
most  self-revealing  of  Beings.  In  the  ordinary  sig- 
nification of  the  word  "  prove,"  all  sane  men  accept  as 
adequately  proved  the  existence  of  the  world,  of  them- 
selves, of  their  bodies  and  spirits,  and  that  in  each  of 
them  body  and  spirit  are  united ;  and  if  many  of  them 
are  in  doubt  as  to  whether  they  are  mortal  or  immor- 
tal it  is  because  of  a  conflict  of  reasons  which  makes 
them  dubious  as  to  whether  there  is  proof  or  on  which 
side  it  is.  The  evidence  for  the  distinction  between 
"  I  "  and  "  Thou  "  excludes  all  rational  doubt.  It  is 
"proof"  as  strong  as  the  self -evidence  of  a  mathemat- 
ical axiom.  "  Nothing  worthy  proving  "  has  been  left 
without  the  power  of  proving  itself.  "  Cleave  ever 
to  the  sunnier  side  of  doubt  "  is  very  questionable  ad- 
vice— an  encouragement  to  selfishness  and  indulgence 
— unless  it  mean.  Cleave  to  the  side  on  which  the 
light  of  reason,  the  sun  of  truth,  shines  clearest.  I 
do  not  in  the  least  blame  the  poet  for  his  use  of  the 
word  prove;  demonstrate  would  have  taken  all  the 

354 


ULTIMATE  OBJECTS   OF  KNOWLEDGE 

music  out  of  his  lines.  What  I  object  to  is  that  ag- 
nostics should  expect  us  to  accept  his  words  as  liter- 
ally, or  even  substantially,  true. 

6.  The  existence  of  obscurity,  mystery,  and  diffi- 
culties in  connection  with  the  objects  of  knowledge 
does  not  disprove  knowledge  of  them.  Propositions 
may  be  perfectly  true,  and  conclusively  proved  to  be 
true,  although  they  involve  incomprehensible  con- 
ceptions, and  are  associated  with  unanswerable  diffi- 
culties. The  ultimate  truths  even  of  mathematics 
have  all  a  side  which  is  lost  in  difficulty  and  darkness. 
The  conclusions  of  the  infinitesimal  calculus  when 
properly  worked  out  have  to  be  accepted  in  spite 
of  all  the  perplexities  which  may  be  suggested  by 
thinking  of  infinites  and  infinitesimals  of  different 
orders.  It  shows  a  lack  of  clearness  of  thought  to 
reject  truths  because  of  merely  connected  difficulties. 
Whatever  reason  assures  us  to  be  real  and  certain 
is  to  be  accepted,  however  much  there  may  be  as- 
sociated with  it  which  is  dubious  and  perplexing. 
The  mysteriousness  inseparable  from  the  immensity, 
infinity,  eternity  of  God,  and  Space,  and  Time  does 
not  make  their  existence  in  the  least  degree  doubtful. 
As  our  knowledge  that  the  grass  grows  is  not  in  the 
least  subverted  by  our  ignorance  of  how  it  grows,  so 
our  knowledge  of  the  existen-ce  of  an  Infinite  and 
Absolute  Being  is  quite  compatible  with  our  inability 
to  form  clear  and  adequate  conceptions  of  Infinity, 
Absoluteness,  and  Being. 

II.    THE    ULTIMATE    OBJECTS    OF    KNOWLEDGE 

The  most  generally  adopted  distribution  of  the 
ultimate  objects  of  knowledge  is  the  threefold  one — 

355 


PARTIAL    OK   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

Self,  the  World,  and  God.  Those  three  objects 
Bishop  Westcott,  for  instance,  designates  "  the  three 
final  existences  which  sum  up  for  us  all  being,"  and 
treats  of  them  as  such  in  a  very  instructive  and  sug- 
gestive way  in  his  Gospel  of  Life  (ch.  i.,  pp.  2-42). 
So  Professor  Fraser  in  his  Philosophy  of  Theism 
(Lect.  IL)  describes  them  as  "  the  three  primary 
data  differently  conceived  by  different  minds  " — 
"  the  ultimate  threefold  articulation  of  the  universe 
of  existence  " — and  admirably  emphasises  the  im- 
portance of  the  right  correlation  of  them  in  human 
thought  and  life.  That  mode  of  distribution,  besides 
being  the  most  familiar  one,  is  also  the  most  con- 
venient as  regards  all  that  I  have  at  present  in  view, 
a  consideration  of  agnosticism  as  to  Self  and  the 
World  in  so  far,  and  only  in  so  far,  as  it  bears  on 
agnosticism  as  to  God.  Therefore  I  avail  myself 
of  it. 

That  it  is  a  faultless  distribution  of  the  ultimate 
objects  of  knowledge,  or  one  which  can  be  safely 
accepted  as  the  principle  of  a  classification  of  the 
sciences  or  of  the  organisation  of  a  philosophy,  I  am 
far  from  affirming.  On  the  contrary,  I  admit  it  to 
have  various  defects.  Two  of  them  it  seems  neces- 
sary to  indicate. 

The  first  is  that  the  terms  "  Self,"  "  World,"  and 
"  God  "  are  not  unambiguous  terms.  "  Self  "  and 
"  world  "  are  apt  to  seem  quite  clear  and  definite. 
They  are  really  very  much  the  reverse.  "  Self  " ! 
What  "  self  "  ?  Is  it  merely  the  individual  self,  the 
self  of  self-consciousness,  the  subject  of  a  mind  as 
cognisant   of  itself  in  feeling,   desiring,   believing, 

356 


ULTIMATE  OBJECTS   OF  KNOWLEDGE 

knowing,  willing,  &c.  If  so,  every  "  self  "  except 
the  individual's  own  must  be  included  not  in  "  self  " 
but  in  the  "  world,"  or  at  least  in  a  distinct  category 
of  selves — say  "  other  selves."  The  difference  be- 
tween the  "  self "  of  self-consciousness  and  the 
"  selves  "  which  are  to  that  "  self  "  merely  objects 
of  knowledge  is  in  some  respects  even  greater  than 
that  between  the  subjective  self  and  physical  objects. 
If  by  "  self  "  be  meant  both  the  subjective  self  and 
objective  selves,  humanity  or  the  human  mind  or 
human  nature  would  seem  to  be  what  is  denoted  by 
it.  But  is  even  that  all  that  should  be  meant?  Can 
we  stop  even  there  ?  Should  not  all  that  feels,  every 
sentient  creature,  be  regarded  as  a  "self"?  If  so, 
by  "  self "  must  be  understood  not  the  individual 
self,  but  the  whole  finite  animate  or  conscious  world, 
or  even  all  spiritual  being  and  life,  the  Divine  in- 
cluded. But  in  that  case  by  the  "  world "  would 
have  to  be  meant  the  merely  material,  the  exclu- 
sively physical,  world.  No  one,  however,  so  restricts 
the  signification  of  the  term  in  ordinary  speech.  The 
external  world  is  not  merely  composed  of  dead  and 
physical  things  but  to  a  large  extent  of  living  and 
conscious  things.  "  Nature  "  and  "  universe  "  we 
often  vaguely  call  it.  And  under  those  names  monis- 
tic physicists  are  in  the  habit  of  identifying  God 
with  it  or  including  God  in  it,  while  thorough  and 
consistent  pantheists  represent  it  not  as  an  object 
of  knowledge  but  as  essentially  an  illusion,  a  decep- 
tive appearance  of  reality. 

The  term  "  God  "  as  used  in  agnostic  controversy 
is — notwithstanding    all    the    different    conceptions 

357 


PARTIAL    OR    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

which  men  have  formed  of  God,  and  notwithstand- 
ing also  that  agnostics  deny  God  to  be  an  object  of 
knowledge,  or  affirm  that  He  is  only  an  object  of 
belief — less  ambiguous  than  either  "  self "  or 
"  world."  And  the  reason  is  obvious.  Non-agnos- 
tics have  to  state  clearly  what  they  mean  by  the  term 
"  God,"  and  agnostics  are  bound  to  show  that  in 
the  sense  affirmed  there  is  no  known  or  even  know- 
able  God.  When,  therefore,  the  non-agnostic  de- 
clares that  he  has,  and  that  others  may  have,  good 
and  sufficient  reasons  for  holding  that  there  is  a  self- 
existent,  infinite,  eternal,  morally  perfect  spirit  or 
mind,  the  source,  sustainer,  and  controller  of  all  finite 
minds  and  existences,  the  agnostic  may,  or  rather 
must,  deny  his  statement,  but  he  cannot  deny  that 
he  knows  what  the  term  "  God  "  as  employed  by  his 
opponent  means,  and  what  both  the  affirmation  and 
the  denial  of  God  in  that  sense  mean.  In  contro- 
versy between  an  agnostic  and  a  non-agnostic  there 
need  be  no  ambiguity  as  to  what  is  meant  by  "  God," 
and  there  seldom  is  any.  One  cannot  say  the  same 
of  the  terms  "  self  "  and  "  world."  It  is  much  easier, 
however,  to  indicate  than  to  remove  the  defects  of 
the  ordinary  threefold  distribution  of  objects  of 
knowledge;  much  easier  to  criticise  it  than  to  replace 
it  by  a  better.  There  is  happily  no  reason  why  I 
should  undertake  the  latter  task. 

None  of  the  ambiguities  in  the  terms  of  the  afore- 
said distribution  of  ultimate  objects  of  knowledge 
can  affect  anything  which  I  have  to  say  in  the  pres- 
ent chapter  regarding  agnosticism  as  to  either  self- 
knowledge  or  world-knowledge.     But  this  question 

358 


ULTIMATE  OBJECTS   OF  KNOWLEDGE 

does  so  to  some  extent, — Are  we  entitled  in  any  dis- 
tribution of  such  objects  of  knowledge  to  ignore 
Space  and  Time,  which,  while  identical  neither  with 
"  self  "  nor  the  "  world,"  mind  nor  matter,  are  yet 
not  mere  imaginations  or  nonentities,  but  necessities 
of  thought,  conditions  of  existence,  and  the  very 
foundations  of  mathematical  science,  on  which  so 
much  other  science  is  dependent?  True,  the  mathe- 
matical sciences  are  not  dependent  only  on  the 
quantitative  relations  with  which  they  are  occupied. 
They  depend  also  on  the  formal  laws  of  thought 
which  it  is  the  business  of  Logic  to  expound.  Sub- 
jective laws,  however,  would  not  lead  to  objective 
truths  had  they  not  real  objects  to  deal  with.  It  has 
never  been  shown  to  be  even  conceivable  that  with- 
out apprehensions  of  space  and  time  we  could  have 
any  valid  or  consistent  conception  whatever  of  objec- 
tivity or  externality.  On  those  apprehensions  the 
mathematical  sciences  rest,  and  of  all  sciences  they 
are  the  most  certain  and  exact.  They  can  dispense 
with  observation  and  are  independent  of  experimen- 
tation. They  need  no  external  verification.  They 
prove  by  their  very  existence  that  there  is  a  knowl- 
edge perfect  of  its  kind  which  has  not  its  exclusive 
or  even  its  main  source  in  sense,  and  the  limits  of 
which  are  not  those  of  sense.  They  are  in  themselves 
an  irrefragable  refutation  of  the  hypotheses  as  to 
the  nature  and  limits  of  knowledge  propounded  by 
empiricists  and  positivists.  I^either  their  principles 
nor  their  conclusions  are  generalisations  of  the  data 
of  sense.  And  yet  they  are — regarded  merely  as 
knowledge — knowledge  at  its  best.     Plato  and  New- 

359 


PARTIAL    OK    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

ton  have  spoken  of  God  as  "  thinking  mathemati- 
cally." Novalis  has  enthusiastically  declared — 
"  Pure  Mathematics  is  religion,  the  life  of  the  gods 
is  mathematics,  the  mathematicians  are  the  only 
happy  men."  John  Bright  has  been  credited  (I 
forget  by  whom)  with  having  said — "  Teach  a  boy 
arithmetic  thoroughly  and  you  will  make  a  man  of 
him."  If  he  said  so  he  must  have  felt  that  there 
was  something  more  in  arithmetic  than  most  people 
imagine,  something  ethical  and  divine,  in  virtue  of 
which,  if  "  thoroughly  taught,"  it  would  not  merely 
exercise  "the  arithmetical  understanding"  and  make 
quick  and  accurate  calculations,  but  also  so  influence 
the  whole  character  and  life  as  to  make  "  men." 

Space  and  Time  are  not  mere  subjective  concep- 
tions. They  are  not  arbitrary  creations  of  thought. 
It  is  not  in  any  man's  power  to  accept  or  reject  them 
at  will,  or  to  apprehend  them  otherwise  than  as  all 
men  apprehend  them.  They  are  objects  of  in- 
tuition and  forms  of  thought,  but  not  merely  or 
exclusively  so;  on  the  contrary,  they  are  intimately 
and  inseparably  connected  with  all  the  facts  of  ex- 
perience and  all  the  objects  of  nature.  Idealism  and 
empiricism  are  alike  incompetent  adequately  to  ac- 
count for  or  even  accurately  to  describe  them.  Kant 
in  his  Critique  of  Pure  Reason  has  attempted  to  do 
so  from  the  standpoint  of  the  former,  and  Dr. 
Shadworth  Hodgson  in  his  Metaphysic  of  Experience 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  latter.  Both  have  failed. 
Both  have  had  to  assume  as  regards  alike  Space  and 
Time  what  they  professed  to  prove.  They  have  cer- 
tainly not  failed  from  lack  of  either  ingenuity  or 

360 


ULTIMATE  OBJECTS   OF  KNOWLEDGE 

industry,  of  either  ability  or  zeal.  To  all  appear- 
ance they  have  failed  because  they  attempted  the 
impossible,  and  there  is  little  hope  of  any  one  else 
succeeding  who  confines  himself  to  the  course  or 
method  of  either. 

Reason  cannot  refuse  to  recognise  that  Space  and 
Time  are  infinite  and  eternal.  Only  so  can  it  think 
of  them.  To  affirm  them  to  be  finite  as  regards 
either  extension  or  duration  would  be  for  reason  a 
suicidal  act.  The  familiar  words  everywhere  and 
always  imply  all  that  is  explicitly  expressed  by  in- 
finite and  eternal.  It  is  distinctive  of  man  as  a 
rational  being  to  have  an  implicit  knowledge  of  in- 
finity and  eternity.  ^  As  soon  as  he  is  capable  of 
reflection  he  finds  himself  cognisant  of  those  two 
transcendental  realities.  He  can  confidently  affirm 
space  to  be  infinite  in  every  direction,  as  it  is  a  self- 
contradiction,  manifestly  irrational,  to  regard  it  as 
finite  in  any  direction.  The  finite  is  the  limited. 
But  by  what  is  space  limited?  It  must  be  either 
by  a  vacuum  or  a  plenum,  and  yet  it  is  absurd  to 
regard  it  as  limited  by  either.  There  is  space  where 
there  is  neither  the  one  nor  the  other.  "Were  there 
no  matter  in  existence, — were  not  merely  the  gross 
matter  which  we  apprehend  through  all  our  senses 
but  also  the  subtle  and  mysterious  ether  which  is 
the  subject  of  so  much  speculation  and  the  object 
of  so  little  positive  knowledge  annihilated, — there 
would  not  be  an  inch  of  space  either  more  or  less 
in  the  universe.  Time  is  infinite  in  two  directions. 
It  has  no  limit  either  on  the  side  of  the  past  or  of 
the  future.     To  say  of  anything  that  it  happened 

361 


PAKTIAL    OR    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

or  will  happen  at  no  time  is  equivalent  to  saying 
that  it  has  never  happened  or  will  never  happen. 
Estimates  of  time  may  vary  indefinitely.  Short- 
lived creatures  may,  perhaps,  in  some  species  be  so 
organised  as  to  feel  life  as  long  as  those  that  are 
really  long-lived.  A  drowning  man  may  in  a  few 
minutes  feel  as  if  he  were  passing  through  the  whole 
course  of  his  past  life.  A  dreaming  man  may  in 
as  short  a  time  imagine  himself  passing  through 
hours  of  exertion,  danger,  or  sorrow.  A  thousand 
years  may  be  as  a  day  and  a  day  as  a  thousand  years 
according  to  the  differences  in  the  rapidity,  vivacity, 
intensity,  &c.,  of  subjective  states  experienced. 
Yet  Time  itself  does  not  vary — does  not  flow  faster 
or  slower,  but  continuously  and  equably  through 
innumerable  imperceptible  instants.  There  is  not  a 
minute  more  in  an  hour  felt  to  be  long  than  in  one 
felt  to  be  brief. 

That  Space  and  Time  are  we  know  and  cannot  fail 
to  know.  Mathematics  shows  that  a  vast  amount 
may  be  known  with  certainty  about  them  and  in 
dependence  on  them.  Yet  how  mysterious  they  are ! 
How  difficult,  and  indeed  even  impossible,  it  is  to 
find  or  invent  fitting  words  to  express  what  they  are ! 
To  say  that  space  is  extension  and  time  duration  is 
just  to  say  that  space  is  space  and  time  time,  or  that 
space  and  time  are  what  they  are,  which  is  no  doubt 
true,  but  no  doubt  also  does  not  add  in  the  least  to 
our  information  as  to  their  nature.  Are  they 
"things"?  Certainly  not,  if  all  things  are  either 
material  or  spiritual.  They  are  neither  material  nor 
spiritual,  although  there  is  nothing  finite,  whether 


ULTIMATE  OBJECTS  OF  KNOWLEDGE 

material  or  spiritual,  conceivable  by  us  otherwise 
than  as  within  them.  Are  they  properties  or  quali- 
ties? Perhaps  they  are.  But  before  we  are  entitled 
positively  to  affirm  that  they  are,  we  should  require 
to  know  what  qualities  or  properties  are,  and  of  what 
substance  or  substances,  being  or  beings,  space  and 
time  are  the  qualities  or  properties.  As  they  are 
infinite  and  eternal  they  cannot  be  confined  or  spe- 
cially belong  to  any  finite  being  or  substance.  The 
infinite  and  eternal  can  be  coexistent  and  coexten- 
sive with  itself  alone.  To  characterise  time  and 
space  as  merely  forms  of  thought  has  the  serious 
defect  of  not  describing  them  as  they  are  actually 
thought  of,  namely,  as  necessary  objects  of  thought 
and  necessary  conditions  of  objective  existence. 

Our  apprehensions  of  space  and  time  are  insep- 
arable from  thoughts  and  convictions  of  immensity 
and  eternity,  and  consequently  bring  with  them  the 
same  thoughts  and  convictions  as  our  apprehensions 
of  God.  They  are  in  the  same  way  mysterious,  and 
in  the  same  way  so  far  from  self-contradictory  that 
they  cannot  fail  to  command  assent.  While  matter 
is  unthinkable  as  either  infinite  or  eternal, — while  it 
can  only  be  conceived  of  as  within  time  and  space, 
as  having  begun  at  a  given  time  and  reached  a 
definite  date,  and  as  being  of  some  particular  mag- 
nitude and  form, — space  and  time  are  like  God  in 
that  they  are  only  truly  thinkable  as  infinite  and 
eternal.  Hence  our  thoughts  of  them  bring  with 
them  so'toe  of  the  same  difficulties  as  our  thoughts 
of  God.  They  bring  with  them  the  same  great 
mysteries    of  self-existence,    eternity,    and    infinity. 

363 


PARTIAL    OR   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

Yet  they  are  not  therefore  incompatible  with  knowl- 
edge and  rational  belief.  On  the  contrary,  they  are 
vehicles  of  a  real  knowledge  of  time  as  eternal,  of 
space  as  infinite,  and  of  both  as  necessarily  existent; 
snch  a  knowledge  as  should  at  least  suffice  to  prevent 
us  from  venturing  to  deny  that  God  can  be  known 
as  eternal,  infinite,  and  necessarily  existent.  No 
otherwise  can  God  be  consistently  thought  of  than 
as  possessed  of  those  attributes.  To  think  of  God 
as  having  begun  to  be  in  time  or  as  confined  to  a 
limited  space  is  to  think  of  Him  as  a  god  who  must 
have  been  created  by  another  God;  in  other  words, 
must  be  to  regard  Him  as  a  false  god,  as  not  truly 
God.  ^o  thoughtful  atheist  even  can  think  of  any 
being  not  eternal  and  infinite  as  truly  God.  Such 
an  atheist,  if  the  most  thorough-going  materialist, 
must  feel  bound  to  invest  matter  itself  with  the  at- 
tributes of  infinity  and  eternity.  He  cannot  ration- 
ally maintain  that  it  has  created  itself  or  assigned 
conditions  or  limits  to  itself.  Nor  can  he  reasonably 
maintain  that  it  has  been  created  either  by  eternal 
time  or  infinite  space,  for  neither  the  one  nor  the 
other  causes  or  creates  anything.  They  are  con- 
ditions of  existence  but  not  efficient  agents,  not 
endowed  with  any  kind  of  power.  They  in  no  way 
account  for  the  existence,  organisation,  peculiarities, 
or  activities  of  anything.  Infinite  space  and  eternal 
time  can  originate  and  explain  nothing  unless  con- 
joined with  Absolute  Being, — self-existent,  self -ac- 
tive, and  spiritual  Being, — the  Being  on  which  all 
finite  and  dependent  beings,  all  animate  creatures, 
all  selves,  all  societies,  live,  move    and  have  their 

3fi4 


ULTIMATE  OBJECTS  OF  KNOWLEDGE 

being.  The  infinity  of  space  and  eternity  of  time, 
instead  of  entitling  us  to  dispense  with  faith  in  an 
infinite  and  eternal  God,  seem  rather  to  demand  such 
faith.  The  self-consistency  of  thought  requires  it. 
Reason  insists  that  the  empty  infinities  of  space  and 
time  be  filled  with  the  powers  and  perfections  of 
reason  in  order  to  be  the  Absolute  Infinity  which  can 
alone  satisfy  rational  minds  and  explain  a  rationally 
organised  universe.  And  the  most  resolute  material- 
ists have  had  practically  to  acknowledge  the  justice 
of  the  claim.  They  have  been  compelled  to  exercise 
their  imaginations  at  the  cost  of  their  reason  in  the 
deification  of  matter.  Holbach,  for  example,  in  his 
Systeme  de  la  Nature  ascribed  to  matter  much  which 
he  denied  to  God,  but  which  cannot  be  sanely  con- 
ceived to  belong  to  matter,  and  which  contradicts 
the  teachings  of  genuine  science.  Haeckel,  whose 
so-called  Monism  is  the  present-day  counterpart  of 
Holbach's  Naturalism,  attributes  infinity  and  eter- 
nity to  a  world-substance,  that  in  the  form  oi 
"  Ether  "  pervades,  fills,  and  animates  all  space  and 
time,  and  is,  in  his  opinion,  the  only  satisfactory 
basis  of  either  religion  or  morality.  Nature  or  the 
World  he  divides  into  "  Ether  "  (=  spirit),  mobile 
or  active  substance,  with  vibration  as  its  property, 
electricity,  magnetism,  light,  and  heat  as  its  func- 
tions, and  a  dynamical,  continuous,  elastic,  and  prob- 
ably non-atomic  structure;  and  "Mass"  (=body) 
inert  or  passive  substance,  with  inertia  as  its  prop- 
erty, gravity  and  chemical  affinity  as  its  functions, 
and  a  discontinuous,  inelastic,  and  probably  atomic 
structure.      Ether,   we   are   told,   is,   theosophically 

365 


PARTIAL    OR    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

speaking,  God  the  Creator,  and  Mass  or  Body  the 
created  world  {Monism,  p.  106).  Such  a  doctrine  is 
surely  no  improvement  on  the  materialistic  systems 
of  earlier  times,  very  unlikely  indeed  to  solve  any 
Weltrdthsel,  and  worthless  as  a  basis  for  either  re- 
ligion or  morality.  The  word  God  has  a  definite 
meaning,  and  no  man  has  any  more  right  to  identify 
it  with  the  Ether  than  with  a  stock  or  a  stone. 

That  eternity  and  infinity  are  not  in  themselves 
distinctively  religious  ideas  I  fully  grant.  To  worship 
pure  space  or  mere  time  is  impossible.  No  human 
being  has  ever  done  anything  so  foolish.  I  must, 
however,  entirely  dissent  from  the  opinion  of  Dr. 
Paul  Carus  ^  that  religion  would  not  suffer  if  the 
ideas  of  eternity  and  infinity  were  abstracted  or  dis- 
sociated from  our  thoughts  of  God.  It  seems  to  me 
that  it  would  suffer  dreadfully;  that  the  abstraction 
referred  to  would  leave  little  room  for  rational  faith 
in  God  or  enlightened  piety  towards  God.  To  deny 
the  infinity  and  eternity  of  God  appears  equivalent 
to  affirming  that  there  are  places  where  He  is  not  or 
even  cannot  be,  and  to  imply  that  He  is  such  a  god 
as  Elijah  described  Baal  to  be,  one  to  whom  it  might 
be  necessary  to  cry  very  loud  as  he  might  be  wholly 
engrossed  with  his  own  thoughts,  or  on  a  journey, 
or  peradventure  asleep  and  must  be  awaked.  How 
has  so  earnest  and  able  a  thinker  as  Dr.  Carus  taken 
up  such  a  position?  Apparently  in  consequence  of 
meaning  by  the  term  "  God  "  "  cosmical  law,"  and 
by  the  term  "  religion. "  "  morality  "  or  "  ethical 
conduct."    Can  any  one,  however,  have  a  right  so  to 

^  Homilies  of  Science,  pp.  108-112. 
366 


ULTIMATE  OBJECTS  OF  KNOWLEDGE 

employ  those  terms  in  controversy  with  others  who 
are  using  them  in  their  ordinary  sense?  Surely  not. 
Such  an  employment  of  them  manifestly  tends  to 
efface  the  distinction  between  theism  and  atheism, 
and  to  make  rational  discussion  between  the  theist 
and  atheist,  the  religious  and  non-religious  man,  im- 
possible. 

Our  cognitions  even  of  Time  and  Space  imply 
some  knowledge  of  the  Absolute  and  Infinite.  Much 
more  must  such  knowledge  be  involved  in  our  appre- 
hensions of  God,  the  true  Absolute,  the  positive  In- 
finite, the  self-existent  and  all-perfect  Being.  It  does 
not  follow,  however,  that  we  have  any  absolute  or 
infinite  knowledge.  All  human  knowledge  is  rela- 
tive and  finite.  Even  the  mathematician  has  only  a 
relative  knowledge  of  the  absolutes  on  which  all  his 
science  rests. 

One  of  them  is  "  time."  The  mathematician  does 
not  know  what  time  is,  but  must  assume  that  it  is, 
and  must  reason  and  calculate  on  that  assumption. 
He  thinks  of  it  as  an  absolute — as  that  which  always 
was,  which  necessarily  is,  which  must  for  ever  be,  and 
yet  which  is  constantly  disappearing  and  reappear- 
ing, ceasing  to  be  and  coming  to  be,  at  every  instant, 
— a  continuum  which  is  ever  the  same  and  yet  never 
the  same,  and  which  flows  ever  onwards  at  an  unvary- 
ing rate.  He  cannot  do  otherwise  than  so  think  of  it, 
although  when  so  thought  of  it  is  profoundly  myste- 
rious and  accompanied  by  apparent  self-contradic- 
tions which  no  one  seems  to  have  satisfactorily  ex- 
plained away.  He  would  seriously  err  were  he  to 
conceive  of  it  as  what  may  once  not  have  been  or  as 

367 


PAKTIAL    OE    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

what  may  not  always  be,  as  capable  of  going  not  only 
forwards  but  backwards,  as  flowing  at  one  time  fast 
and  at  another  slow  or  occasionally  ceasing  to  move 
at  all.  Yet  while  he  would  seriously  err  were  he  to 
reject  the  idea  of  "  mathematical,  true,  and  absolute 
time,"  he  may  well  be  profoundly  thankful  that  in 
the  prosecution  of  his  science  or  in  the  application 
of  it  what  he  has  to  deal  with  is  "  relative,  apparent, 
and  common  time." 

I^ot  otherwise  is  it  as  regards  "  space."  Space  is 
necessarily  thought  of  as  absolute  and  infinite,  as  what 
cannot  not  be  or  be  otherwise  than  as  it  is  thought 
to  be — i.e.,  as  immovable  and  irremovable,  immuta- 
ble and  indivisible,  timeless  and  changeless.  Yet  no 
human  being  has  an  absolute  apprehension  of  space. 
The  mathematician  and  the  metaphysician  alike  must 
be  content  with  a  relative,  vague,  and  imperfect  ap- 
prehension of  it.  The  more  they  know  of  it  the  more 
conscious  will  they  be  how  relative  and  imperfect 
their  conceptions  of  it  are.  Until  modern  times  men 
thought  that  they  knew  with  entire  certainty  where 
the  centre  of  the  world  was — that  it  was  at  Jerusalem 
— and  that  there  could  not  possibly  be  men  on  the 
side  of  it  opposite  to  their  own.  Will  any  one  now 
venture  to  affirm  that  there  is  an  ahsolute  centre  or 
absolute  up  or  down  in  space  f  Would  doing  so  not 
be  to  follow  the  bad  example  of  the  Christian  fathers 
and  medieval  schoolmen  who  pronounced  it  senseless 
and  profane  to  believe  that  there  could  be  human  be- 
ings on  the  side  of  the  earth  opposite  to  their  own  ? 
It  was  for  many  ages  firmly  held  that  the  sun  and 
planets  turned  round  the  earth.     Copernicus  and  Gal- 

368 


AGNOSTICISM    AND    THE    SELF 

ileo  proved  that  the  geocentric  theory  should  give 
place  to  a  heliocentric  one,  and,  notwithstanding  the 
long  and  bitter  opposition  alike  of  Catholic  and  of 
Protestant  divines,  the  latter  theory  is  now  universally 
accepted.  Its  superiority  over  the  geocentric  theory 
as  regards  tracing  the  movements  of  the  universe  is 
obvious  and  immense.  It  is  vastly  more  convenient 
to  take  the  sun  as  the  standpoint  of  observation  than 
the  earth.  But  the  geocentric  theory  was  not  wholly 
erroneous;  on  the  contrary,  the  predecessors  of  Gali- 
leo observed,  from  their  point  of  view,  as  correctly  as 
he  did  from  his.  Nor  is  the  heliocentric  theory  ideal- 
ly perfect.  The  sun  no  more  affords  an  absolute  posi- 
tion than  the  earth  does.  In  some  of  the  far-off 
worlds  of  God's  great  universe  there  may  quite  con- 
ceivably be  astronomers  who  have  enormous  advan- 
tages in  the  prosecution  of  their  studies  over  their 
terrestrial  brethren.  Although  then  a  vague  appre- 
hension of  absolute  space  seems  to  underlie  and  to  be 
implied  in  all  our  definite  and  relative  conceptions  of 
space,  it  would  seeni  as  if  we  can  only  deal  in  a  prac- 
tical way  with  relative  space.  "  Any  one,"  Clerk 
Maxwell  wisely  and  wittily  said,  "  who  will  try  to 
imagine  the  state  of  a  mind  conscious  of  knowing  the 
absolute  position  of  a  point  will  ever  after  be  content 
with  our  relative  knowledge."  ^ 

III.    AGNOSTICISM    AND    THE    SELF 

Of  all  kinds  of  doubt  or  disbelief  the  most  difficult 
for  the  sceptic  to  justify  is  doubt  or  disbelief  of  the 
testimony  of  self -consciousness.     Indeed  it  is  only 

•  Matter  and  Motion,  p.  20. 
369 


PARTIAL    OR   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

possible  to  give  expression  to  such  doubt  or  disbelief 
in  confused  and  self-contradictory  terms.  To  enter- 
tain either  the  one  or  the  other  intelligently  and  sin- 
cerely is  impossible  so  long  as  by  self -consciousness  is 
meant  self-consciousness  strictly  so-called, — self-con- 
sciousness in  its  own  proper  and  special  sphere. 

That  sphere  is,  however,  narrower  than  the  ordi- 
nary man,  than  the  non-psychologist,  is  apt  to  suppose. 
Self-consciousness  is  often  imagined  to  testify  to  far 
more  than  it  does,  and  is  very  apt  to  be  appealed  to  in 
an  unwarranted  way.  Difficult  and  delicate  cross- 
questioning  may  be  required  to  elicit  precisely  what 
its  testimony  is,  and  much  caution  and  judgment  to 
apply  that  testimony  aright.  Careful  analysis  and 
induction  are  needed  in  order  to  determine  what 
properly  belongs  to  self-consciousness,  what  is  exactly 
and  exclusively  its  own,  and  what  is  merely  associated 
with  it  or  implied  in  it.  Self -consciousness  seems  to 
testify  to  the  validity  of  a  great  number  of  percep- 
tions and  judgments  which  are  not  immediate  appre- 
hensions of  its  own  but  beliefs  and  inferences  as  to 
the  origin  and  nature,  truth  or  falsity,  normality  or 
abnormality,  of  which  self-consciousness  is  no  ade- 
quate judge.  For  example,  it  seems  to  testify  that 
we  see  directly,  immediately,  and  exclusively  through 
the  organs  of  vision,  one  object  to  be  more  distant 
from  us  than  another;  the  relative  sizes  and  various 
other  features  of  the  constituents  of  a  landscape,  &c. : 
yet  it  is  not  so,  the  perception  of  distance  being  an  ac- 
quired perception,  and  the  eye,  although  seeming,  in 
the  circumstances  supposed,  to  do  all  the  needed  work, 
in  reality  merely  giving  visual  marks  which  we  are 

370 


AGNOSTICISM    AND    THE    SELF 

able  to  interpret  through  experiences  acquired  from 
touch,  muscular  exertion,  &c.  We  seem  to  be  con- 
scious that  the  moon  is  a  bright  disk,  that  we  are  at 
rest  in  space,  and  that  the  earth  occupies  a  fixed  posi- 
tion. But  Astronomy  dispels  those  illusions  of  con- 
sciousness ;  proves  that  moon  and  stars  are  not  what 
they  seem, — that  where  we  think  rest  is  there  is 
motion,  and  where  motion  rest ;  and,  in  a  word,  shows 
that  the  appearances  to  sense,  being  as  dependent  on 
the  constitution  of  the  organs  of  the  subject  as  of  the 
properties  of  the  object,  do  not  correspond  with  the 
realities  beyond  them.  As  to  mental  processes  of  a 
subtler  kind, — those  of  an  entirely  psychological  nat- 
•  ure, — the  illusions  and  involuntary  deceptions  of  con- 
sciousness, or  rather  what  appear  to  be  such,  are  not 
less  numerous,  nor  can  it  be  less  the  work  of  science 
not  to  confirm  but  to  correct  them. 

Self -consciousness  is  consciousness  only  of  our  own 
mental  states,  and  only  of  them  as  being  ours.  When 
we  know,  feel,  desire,  or  will  in  any  form,  the  know- 
ing, feeling,  desiring,  willing,  is  known,  felt,  con- 
sciously realised  by  us  as  belonging  to  us,  as  states  of 
our  own  selves.  Along  with  whatever  we  know,  or 
otherwise  consciously  experience,  self  or  the  ego  is 
known  or  consciously  experienced.  The  knowledge 
thus  afforded  us,  and  no  other,  is  the  knowledge  which 
is  given  in  self-consciousness.  The  fact  that  such 
knowledge  is  distinctly  limited  ought  to  be  carefully 
noted.  The  agnostic  argumentation  as  to  self-knowl- 
edge generally  derives  any  plausibility  it  has  to  over- 
looking it,  and  consequently  charging  self-conscious- 
ness with  failing  to  be  or  to  attain  what  it  cannot 

371 


PARTIAL    OR    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

intelligently  be  claimed  to  be  or  held  to  aim  at.  Self- 
consciousness  is  not  a  substitute  for  any  other  form  of 
knowledge ;  it  cannot  perform  the  work  of  our  senses, 
our  memories,  or  any  of  our  processes  of  logical  in- 
ference or  scientific  method.  It  can  only  certify  to 
present  belief ;  not  to  past  belief,  or  to  the  truth  of  be- 
lief as  to  external  objects  whether  present  or  past.  It 
can  only  certify  as  to  what  is  immediately  given  in 
and  to  itself ;  not  as  to  how  or  by  what  processes  that 
has  been  given.  It  can  only  certify  to  the  particular 
immediately  and  directly  felt ;  not  to  what  is  general 
and  gained  by  inference,  induction,  or  abstraction. 

We  are  not  to  infer,  however,  that  because  the 
knowledge  given  by  self-consciousness  is  limited,  as 
has  just  been  indicated,  it  is  therefore  either  small  in 
amount  or  of  slight  importance.  It  is,  on  the  con- 
trary, very  extensive  and  supremely  valuable,  owing 
to  being  inseparable  from  knowledge  in  every  form 
and  the  condition  of  all  functions  of  mental  life. 
When  I  think  I  Jcnow  that  I  think.  When  I  expe- 
rience an  emotion  I  Jcnow  that  I  experience  it.  When 
I  take  a  resolution  I  hnow  that  I  take  it.  When 
I  put  forth  voluntary  energy  I  hnow  that  I  am  doing 
so.  Self -consciousness  cleaves  to  the  self  in  all  phases 
of  its  activity,  experience,  and  endurance.  It  is  a  di- 
rect and  immediate  knowledge  of  all  the  mental  states 
of  the  self  so  far  as  they  are  directly  and  immediately 
known.  Without  it  we  could  have,  no  knowledge  even 
of  our  own  minds,  as  all  mediate  and  indirect  knowl- 
edge presupposes  and  is  rendered  possible  by  imme- 
diate and  direct  knowledge.  Along  with  whatever  we 
know,  or  even  can  seem  to  know,  self  must  be  known, 

372 


AGNOSTICISM    AND    THE    SELF 

and  the  knowledge  of  self  in  the  form  of  self-con- 
seionsness  is  the  root  of  all  attainable  knowledge  of 
self  beyond  the  sphere  of  immediate  self-conscious- 
ness. But  it  is  vastly  more  than  that,  being  implied 
in  all  our  knowledge  of  the  material  world  and  enter- 
ing still  more  deeply  into  our  knov/ledge  of  the  spir- 
itual world.  It  is  indispensable  to  our  attainment  of 
any  knowledge  of  other  selves.  Self -consciousness  is 
the  key  which  .enables  us  to  enter  into  the  conscious- 
ness of  the  race,  to  interpret  the  experiences  of  all 
sorts  and  conditions  of  men,  and  to  realise  that  noth- 
ing human  is  foreign  to  us.  It  gives  to  the  indi- 
vidual mind  access  to  the  universal  mind  of  which 
history  is  the  record;  and  thus,  as  Emerson  has  re- 
minded us,  makes  man  not  only 

'  *  owner  of  the  sphere, 
Of  the  seven  stars  and  the  solax  year," 

but  also 

"  Of  Caesar's  hand,  and  Plato's  brain, 
Of  Lord  Christ's  heart,  and  Shakespeare's  strain." 

Nor  is  the  community  of  consciousness  which  is  root- 
ed in  self-consciousness  confined  to  humanity.  It 
takes  in  animal  consciousness  and  makes  men  capable 
of  understanding  what  the  expressions  of  that  con- 
sciousness signify.  Only  through  it  is  access  possible 
into  the  wondrous  world  of  life  and  activity  consti- 
tuted by  the  innumerable  beings  which,  although 
lower  than  man,  are  in  many  instructive  ways  re- 
lated to  him.  The  whole  science  of  comparative  psy- 
chology is  dependent  on  it,  and  comparative  psy- 
chology has  to  do  not  only  with  the  physical  states  of 

373 


PAETIAL    OE    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

all  varieties  of  mankind  but  of  all  species  even  of  sen- 
tient creatures.  Self-consciousness  is  the  corner-stone 
of  comparative  psychology  taken  in  its  widest  sense ; 
and  comparative  psychology  so  understood  must  have 
a  great  future  before  it,  as  it  is  a  vast  realm  many 
territories  of  which  have  hardly  been  even  begun  to 
be  explored. 

The  foregoing  observations  may  so  far  suggest  how 
much  would  be  lost  were  agnosticism  to  succeed  in 
discrediting  the  testimony  of  self -consciousness.  The 
history  of  philosophy  shows  that  agnosticism  has 
made  many  attempts  with  that  intent.  Therefore  I 
must  briefly  refer  to  the  chief  arguments  it  has  em- 
ployed. 

Hume,  as  has  already  been  indicated,  sought  to  jus- 
tify his  scepticism  by  the  reduction  of  consciousness 
to  a  succession  of  momentary  and  unconnected  states. 
He  could  have  taken  no  more  direct  way  to  attain  his 
end,  and  he  boldly  declared  that  a  study  of  conscious- 
ness shows  that  "  what  we  call  a  mind  is  nothing  but 
a  heap  or  collection  of  different  perceptions,  united  to- 
gether by  certain  relations,  and  supposed,  though 
falsely,  to  be  endowed  with  a  perfect  simplicity  and 
identity."  But  he  failed  to  make  good  the  assertion. 
His  appeal  to  consciousness  was  vitiated  by  his  ex- 
clusively empirical  way  of  looking  alike  at  nature 
and  mind.  What  was  inconsistent  with  liis  theory  of 
knowledge  he  simply  refused  to  see ;  and  unfortunate- 
ly any  reasonable  theory  of  self-identity — any  theory 
of  real  self-identity — was  inconsistent  with  it.  When 
conscious  at  all  he  certainly  always  found  himself 
conscious  of  what  he  called  ideas,  impressions,  per- 

374 


AGNOSTICISM    AND    THE    SELF 

ceptions;  but  he  could  not  with  any  consistency  fully 
acknowledge  that  fact,  and  hence  he  had  to  say  that 
he  was  conscious  only  of  being  a  series  of  ideas  and 
impressions,  a  heap  or  collection  of  perceptions,  and 
that  continuity  of  being  and  self-identity  were  "  fic- 
titious " — i.e.,  illusions.  None  the  less,  however,  was 
the  self — his  own  self — existent  and  present  although 
he  chose  to  overlook  it,  and  none  the  less  were  the 
ideas,  perceptions,  and  impressions  experienced  states 
or  acts  of  that  self.  He  was  always  conscious  of  it  as 
conditioning  and  sustaining  his  varying  mental 
states,  as  present  in  and  with  every  feeling  he  real- 
ised, every  thought  he  formed,  every  resolution  on 
which  he  acted.  The  self  is  permanent  and  ever  pres- 
ent in  consciousness,  and  therefore  the  continuous 
subject  of  consciousness,  as  well  as  an  indubitably 
possible  object  of  introspective  and  reflective  inquiry. 
Hume  was  a  habitual  and,  when  unbiassed,  very  com- 
petent observer  of  the  facts  of  consciousness,  and  that 
he  certainly  could  not  have  been  without  the  help  of 
the  self  and  self-consciousness  which  he  pretended  to 
be  unknown  or  non-existent.  His  whole  work  as  a  psy- 
chologist was  a  practical  demonstration  that  he  could 
himself  do  what  under  the  influence  of  a  false  theory 
he  professed  could  not  be  done. 

Mr.  Herbert  Spencer  has  affirmed  self  to  be  un- 
knowable, and  has  denied  that  what  is  called  self- 
consciousness  is  knowledge.  "  The  personality,"  he 
says,  "  of  which  each  one  is  conscious,  and  of  which 
the  existence  is  to  each  a  fact  beyond  all  others  the 
most  certain,  is  yet  a  thing  which  cannot  be  truly 
known  at  all,  knowledge  of  it  being  forbidden  by  the 

375 


PAETIAL    OR   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

very  nature  of  thought."  ^  For  thinking  so  he  has 
given  two  reasons,  one  drawn  from  "  the  extent  of 
consciousness  "  and  another  from  "  the  substance  or 
nature  of  consciousness, — its  primitive  dualism." 
The  latter  has  been  employed  by  so  many  other  writ- 
ers that,  in  connection  with  Mr.  Spencer,  I  need  only 
refer  to  the  former.  It  is  to  this  effect.  Conscious- 
ness exists  only  as  a  chain  of  states,  a  series  of  sub- 
jective modifications.  But  the  chain  or  series  can  be 
neither  infinite  nor  finite :  not  infinite,  for  an  infinite 
quantity  is  a  contradiction ;  and  not  finite,  for  we  can 
comprehend  neither  the  beginning  nor  the  end, 
neither  the  first  nor  the  last  link  or  term  of  it. 
Hence,  according  to  Mr.  Spencer,  it  is  unrepresent- 
able, and  consequently  unknowable.  Consciousness 
as  it  cannot  be  perceived  cannot  be  represented,  and 
being  unrepresentable  must  be  also  unknowable. 

The  argument,  however,  seems  quite  inconclusive. 
All  that  it  really  shows  appears  to  be  the  impropriety 
of  employing  a  word  in  an  arbitrary  manner.  The 
very  term  consciousness  implies  that  it  includes 
knowledge.  What  right  has  any  individual  philoso- 
pher to  assume,  and  to  argue  on  the  assumption,  that 
there  is  no  scientia  in  it  ?  Every  one,  Mr.  Spencer 
not  excepted,  regards  the  immediate  data  of  con- 
sciousness as  the  most  certain  and  indubitable  of  facts 
and  of  apprehensions  of  fact.  Personality,  Mr. 
Spencer  himself  expressly  tells  us,  each  one  is  con- 
scious of,  and  its  existence  is  to  each  one  a  fact  beyond 
all  others  the  most  certain.  But  if  so,  if  immediate 
and  indubitable  consciousness  of  self  or  personality 
'  First  Principles,  Pt.  I.  ch.  iii.  §  20. 
376 


SPENCEE 

as  a  fact,  if  the  most  certain  of  all  apprehensions  of 
reality,  be  not  knowledge,  what  is  knowledge,  or  what 
else  can  be  better  entitled  to  be  called  knowledge  ?  It 
is  surely  even  more  worthy  to  be  called  knowledge 
than  any  perception  of  sense  or  any  apprehension  of 
what  can  be  figured  or  pictured  by  the  understanding 
with  thfe  help  of  imagination.  There  is  no  knowledge 
superior  to  the  testimony  of  self -consciousness.  It  is 
easier  to  err  as  to  what  one  sees  than  as  to  whether  or 
not  one  is  conscious  of  seeing.  Self-consciousness  is 
the  fundamental  presupposition  of  all  knowledge, — 
that  alone  which  cannot  but  be  known  along  with  all 
knowledge,  and  apart  from  which  there  can  be  no 
knowledge. 

The  objection  which  has  been  most  frequently 
urged  against  the  possibility  of  self-knowledge  is  that 
self  the  subject  of  knowledge  cannot  be  also  the  ob- 
ject of  knowledge.  Broussais,  Comte,  Maudsley, 
Spencer,  and  others  have  employed  it.  Yet  it  is  not 
a  very  serious  objection.  It  may  even  without  much 
presumption  be  doubted  if  it  require  an  answer.  That 
along  with  whatever  is  known  self  is  known  is  a  uni- 
versally experienced  fact,  and  hence  whoever  urges 
the  objection  in  the  very  act  of  doing  so  contradicts 
himself.  Every  one  who  denies  that  he  knows  him- 
self is  conscious  of  knowing  himself  in  the  very  act 
of  denying  knowledge  of  himself; — as  consciously 
and  certainly  aware  of  his  knowledge  of  himself  as  of 
his  denial  of  it.  What  is  the  use,  however,  of  arguing 
against  a  fact  so  attested  ?  What  can  it  avail  to  rea- 
son so  irrationally  ?  "  Facts  are  chiels  that  winna 
ding,"  says  the  poet.     And  of  all  facts  that  of  self- 

377 


PAirriAL    oil    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

knowledge  can  least  be  "  dung  " — can  least  be  broken 
down  or  thrust  aside. 

To  endeavour  to  justify  doubt  or  denial  of  the 
l)Ossibilitj  of  self-knowledge  by  representing  self- 
reflection  or  introspection  as  a  mere  gazing  in  vacuo 
is  a  very  futile  procedure.  There  is  no  warrant  for 
so  restricting  internal  observation  as  to  exclude  from 
it  the  placing  oneself  in  those  jxtsitions  in  which  such 
observation  is  alone  possible.  The  intelligent  student 
of  mental  phenomena  does  not  attempt  to  analyse 
them  or  to  discover  their  laws  by  mere  vague  un- 
regulated peering  and  spying  into  himself.  He  re- 
calls and  reproduces  them  as  they  have  occurred  in 
his  own  experience  and  takes  account  of  how  they 
have  been  described  by  others;  reflects  on  how  his 
own  and  other  minds  have  worked  in  diverse  situa- 
tions; analyses  the  conceptions  and  notes  the  shades 
of  sentiment  of  which  language  is  the  expression; 
traces  the  trains  of  thought  and  phases  of  emotion 
mirrored  in  literature;  and  studies  humanity  in 
action  as  portrayed  in  history.  The  psychologist  is 
none  the  less  of  a  psychologist  because  he  requires 
in  studying  the  human  consciousness  to  look  into 
men's  faces,  listen  to  their  words,  read  their  books 
and  biographies,  &c.,  seeing  that  his  special  business 
in  doing  so  is  not  with  the  features  of  faces,  sounds 
of  words,  or  letters  of  books, — not  with  what  his 
eyes  and  ears  present  to  him  but  with  what  his  mind 
apprehends,  analyses,  and  otherwise  deals  vnth, — not 
with  phases  or  processes  of  matter  but  with  states 
or  functions  of  consciousness, — not  with  the  physical 
but  with  the  psychical. 

378 


BEOUSSAIS   AND   CONSCIOUSNESS 

The  French  physician  Broussais  published  in  1828 
a  treatise  entitled  De  V Irritation  et  de  la  Folie  which 
attracted  much  attention  and  was  largely  a  polemic 
against  consciousness.  He  did  not  deny  that  con- 
sciousness bore  a  testimony  which  could  not  be 
wholly  ignored,  but  he  admitted  even  that  grudg- 
ingly, and  represented  its  testimony  as  insignificant, 
and  indeed  as  confined  to  a  single  fact — the  bare 
assertion  that  one  feels  that  one  feels.  Consciousness 
had,  he  maintained,  nothing  properly  its  own.  All 
its  contents  he  traced  to  the  senses.  "  A  reasonable 
man,"  he  declared,  "  cannot  admit  the  existence  of 
what  is  not  demonstrated  by  some  sense  "  (op.  cit., 
ii.  6);  and,  speaking  of  his  opponents,  he  said, — 
^'  We  defy  them  to  find  a  single  idea  in  their  psy- 
chology which  is  not  copied  from  some  object  or 
scene  of  nature  "  (ii.  22). 

Both  statements  are  misleading.  A  reasonable 
man,  if  he  exercise  his  reason  aright,  cannot  fail  to 
admit  the  existence  of  what  is  not  demonstrated  by 
any  sense.  Thoughts  and  feelings,  desires  and  voli- 
tions, undoubtedly  exist,  and  as  undoubtedly  it  is 
not  by  any  sense  that  their  existence  is  demonstrated. 
Who  ever  saw,  smelled,  heard,  touched,  or  tasted 
them?  Further,  even  if  we  suppose  it  to  be  true 
that  every  idea  is  copied,  as  Broussais  asserted,  from 
some  object  or  scene  of  nature,  he  inferred  too  much 
from  it.  On  what  ground  did  he  himself  suppose  it 
true?  Only  on  the  strength  of  an  argument  to  the 
effect  that  the  words  used  to  express  psychological 
facts  have  primitively  served  to  designate  purely 
physical  facts.     An  argument  to  that  effect,  however, 

379 


PAETIAL   OK   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

is  not  only  inadequate  but  irrelevant.  Proof  that  the 
words  used  to  express  psychological  facts  have  prim- 
itively served  to  designate  purely  physical  facts  is 
no  proof  that  the  two  classes  of  facts — the  psycho- 
logical and  physical — are  themselves  identical.  The 
objects  of  sense  attract  attention  before  there  is 
reflection  on  states  of  mind.  The  organs  of  sense 
are  actively  occupied  before  there  is  any  attempt  at 
introspective  exertion.  Hence  language  is  from  its 
very  origin  so  steeped  in  sense  that  it  can  never  be 
completely  spiritualised;  and  hence  also  although  we 
can  indicate  and  illustrate  the  things  of  the  spirit  in 
the  terms  and  imagery  of  sense,  our  power  to  reverse 
the  process  is  exceedingly  limited.  That  the  words 
used  to  express  psychological  facts  were  evolved  out 
of  words  which  primitively  designated  physical  facts 
is  very  probably  true,  and  certainly  a  vast  amount  of 
evidence  may  be  brought  forward  in  favour  of  it; 
but  even  were  its  proof  absolutely  complete  it  would 
be  no  proof  of  what  Broussais  wished  to  establish. 
Further,  words  never  designate  purely  'physical  facts. 
They  designate  only  facts  which  are  dependent  not 
only  on  the  properties  of  external  objects  but  also 
on  the  constitution  and  activity  of  the  self  or  subject 
of  knowledge.  The  objects  and  organs  of  sense  give 
us  no  information  apart  from  the  subject  or  self. 
Broussais  quite  underestimated  the  influence  and 
significance  of  the  subjective  factor  in  knowledge 
when  he  wrote  as  follows :  "  The  senses  can  alone 
furnish  us  with  correct  ideas  of  bodies,  and  con- 
sciousness furnishes  us  with  no  other  incontestable 
fact,  no  other  fact  which  can  dispense  with  the  proof 

380 


PHYSIOLOGICAL  CONDITIONS 

of  the  senses  than  the  interior  sensation.  The  testi- 
mony of  consciousness  is  therefore  not  equivalent  to 
that  of  the  senses,  and  the  science  that  one  can  draw 
from  the  first  is  soon  attained,  seeing  that  it  reduces 
itself  to  an  assertion.  I  am  endowed  with  the  faculty 
of  feeling  that  I  feel.  But  this  assertion  expresses  a 
fact,  and  that  is  all  "  {op.  cit.,  ii.  27,  28).  Coming 
from  Broussais,  a  materialist  so  thorough-going  that 
he  would  not  admit  the  existence  of  anything  spirit- 
ual in  man,  any  specific  self  or  soul,  and  who  defined 
soul  in  the  words  Vdme  est  un  cerveau  agissant  et  rien 
de  plus,  the  mere  admission  that  consciousness  has  a 
testimony  of  its  own  to  bear,  a  specific  item  to  con- 
tribute to  knowledge,  is  interesting  and  instructive; 
but  he  deplorably  failed  to  see  how  much  was  in- 
volved in  the  fact  which  he  recognised.  The  reality 
of  self -consciousness,  if  a  fact  at  all,  is  one  of  enor- 
mous significance.  It  means  that  without  it  there  can 
be  no  knowledge;  that  with  it  all  possible  human 
knowledge  is  attainable;  that  it  so  enters  into  all 
human  knowledge  that  to  speak  of  "  purely  physical 
facts  "  is  foolish  talk,  as  no  such  facts  are  known  to 
man  or  knowable  by  him;  and  that  the  testimony  of 
consciousness,  instead  of  being  "  a  poor  and  insig- 
nificant fact,"  is  one  of  extraordinary  wealth  and 
importance. 

Exaggeration  of  the  dependence  of  consciousness 
on  physiological  conditions  is  another  way  in  which 
the  discrediting  of  the  testimony  of  self -conscious- 
ness has  been  attempted.  Gall,  Spurzheim,  Comte, 
Laycock,  Ch.  Robin,  and  many  others  have  so  pro- 
ceeded.  They  have  represented  intelligence,  feeling, 

381 


PAETIAL    OE   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

emotion,  and  will  as  simply  biological  results,  cere- 
bral processes  or  changes.  They  would  substitute 
for  the  direct,  careful,  and  comprehensive  study  of 
the  phenomena  of  mind  study  of  the  properties  of 
the  body,  dissection  of  the  brain,  and  psycho-physical 
experimentation.  But  obviously  there  are  both  nar- 
rowness and  exaggeration  in  that  view.  There  is 
undoubtedly  a  close  connection  between  mental 
states  and  physical  conditions,  but  what  the  connec- 
tion is  and  how  far  it  extends  can  only  be  ascertained 
by  those  who  make  use  of  the  methods  and  results 
of  both  physiology  and  psychology,  not  of  those  who 
sacrifice  the  rights  of  either  to  those  of  the  other. 
Introspection  and  external  observation  are  distinct, 
and  hence  psychology  and  physiology  have  each  their 
own  sphere.  The  phenomena  which  are  the  proper 
objects  of  study  of  either  are  not  resolvable  into  the 
phenomena  which  have  to  be  dealt  with  by  the  other, 
so  that  they  are  independent  although  closely  related 
sciences.  'No  one  has  sought  more  strenuously  than 
Dr.  Maudsley  to  identify  brain  with  mind  by  break- 
ing down  what  he  calls  "  the  absolute  and  unholy 
barrier  set  up  between  physical  and  psychical  nat- 
ure." But  with  what  result?  The  plain  and  often 
repeated  contradiction  of  his  own  teaching;  as  also 
his  enforced  admission  that  the  observation  of  physi- 
cal objects,  the  closest  study  even  of  the  brain  and 
nerves,  cannot  give  us  even  the  least  direct  informa- 
tion as  to  feelings,  ideas,  and  volitions,  any  more 
than  material  changes  even  in  the  brain  and  nerves 
can  be  known  by  mental  introspection. 

The   untrustworthiness   of  self-consciousness   has 
382 


IMPORTANCE   OF   KNOWLEDGE   OF   SELF 

been  affirmed  on  another  ground,  namely,  that  in 
many  cases  the  sensations  are  so  perverted  that  the 
idea  of  the  self  is  lost,  and  even  that  the  idea  of 
another  self  is  not  infrequently  substituted  for  it. 
In  other  words,  the  delusions  of  the  insane  as  to 
consciousness  and  self-identity  have  been  brought 
forward  to  destroy  confidence  in  the  testimony  of 
consciousness.  The  reality  of  numerous  facts  of  the 
kind  must  be  admitted.  There  are  illusions  of  intro- 
spection as  well  as  of  perception  or  memory.  The 
insane  often  fancy  themselves  to  be  not  themselves 
but  other  selves,  kings,  queens,  sages,  or  other  his- 
torical personages.  The  shepherds  of  Arcadia,  the 
aborigines  of  Brazil,  and  the  Indians  of  North  Amer- 
ica have  been  described  as  apt  to  be  subject  to  the 
delusion  that  they  were  wild  animals,  and  as  under 
the  influence  of  the  delusion  acting  accordingly.  The 
abnormal  facts  referred  to,  however,  fail  to  prove 
either  that  knowledge  of  the  true  self  is  lost  or  that 
knowledge  of  the  false  self  is  substituted  for  it.  As 
regards  the  former  proposition,  there  is  no  difficulty 
in  showing  that  a  consciousness  of  self  remains 
amidst  all  the  perversion  and  confusion  of  ideas 
prevalent  in  the  madman's  brain;  and  as  regards  the 
latter,  it  can  as  easily  be  shown  that  the  man  who 
fancies  himself  another  self  still  believes  that  he  is 
himself.  The  charge  of  untrustworthiness  which  has 
been  brought  against  self-consciousness  has  not  been 
substantiated.  Those  who  have  urged  it — most  of 
them  have  been  physicians — have  themselves  had  to 
trust  the  consciousness  of  the  insane,  as  no  otherwise 
could   they  have   distinguished   between  mendacity 

383 


PAETIAL    OR   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

and  insanity.  The  hallucinations  of  the  insane  are 
not  falsehoods  or  fictions,  but  true  and  real  as  facts 
of  consciousness. 

Enough,  I  think,  has  now  been  said  to  show  that 
even  self  may  be  made  the  object  of  agnostic  attacks; 
that  even  the  testimony  of  self-consciousness  may  be 
disputed  and  rejected.  The  very  existence  of  self 
may  be  called  in  question.  The  very  possibility  of 
knowing  it  may  be  denied.  Yet  there  is  no  rational 
or  practical  dubiety  as  to  either  the  existence  of  self 
or  the  reality  of  a  knowledge  of  it.  There  is  nothing 
of  which  a  man  is  more  certain  than  that  he  is ;  that 
he  is  conscious  that  he  is ;  and  that  his  consciousness 
that  he  is  is  a  knowledge  on  which  he  may  reasonably 
and  confidently  rely. 

Self-consciousness,  however,  is  not  merely  a  kind 
of  knowledge.  It  is  also  the  fundamental  condition 
and  universal  accompaniment  of  every  kind  of 
knowledge.  Eurther,  it  is  at  once  the  root-principle 
of  knowledge  and  the  knowledge  which  possesses  the 
highest  certitude.  Nothing  is  surer  in  the  conscious- 
ness of  any  self  than  that  itself  is  itself.  Without 
that  certitude  there  could  be  no  other  certitude,  no 
other  firm  conviction  or  trustworthy  experience. 
Even  if  neural  and  mental  processes  were  to  take 
place  they  would  be  unfelt  and  unintelligible,  and 
the  whole  body  and  mind  in  which  they  occurred 
would  be  a  chaos  without  unity,  order,  or  purpose. 
Hence  the  importance  of  the  fact  that  each  self  so 
far  as  conscious  is  always  self-conscious.  But  it  does 
not  follow  that  each  self  has  always  either  a  profound 
or   comprehensive    self-consciousness.      That   is,   in 

384 


KNOWLEDGE    OF   SELF   DEFECTIVE 

fact,  far  from  being  the  case.  "  Know  thyself  "  is 
a  precept  not  easily  obeyed.  Men  are  often  more 
alive  to  the  defects  of  their  neighbours  than  to  their 
own.  Beneath  the  surface  clearness  of  immediate 
self-consciousness  there  are  dark  depths  of  uncon- 
sciousness which  few  care  or  try  to  explore,  yet  the 
reality  of  which  cannot  be  doubted.  What  they  con- 
tain come  at  times  to  light  in  the  great  crises  of  life, 
in  seasons  of  temptation,  excitement,  and  revolution, 
or  in  strange  and  abnormal  experiences.  They  may 
also  be  to  some  extent  apprehended  through  patient 
and  thoughtful  self-examination,  through  the  study 
of  other  selves,  and  attention  to  the  results  which 
have  been  attained  by  psychology  normal  and  mor- 
bid, human  and  comparative.  Those,  however,  who 
have  advanced  the  farthest  in  self-knowledge  are 
just  those  who  will  be  the  readiest  to  admit  that  their 
knowledge  is  neither  comprehensive  nor  profound. 
Each  man  knows  himself  "svith  absolute  certainty  as 
a  fact.  And  yet  every  truly  intelligent  man  is  aware 
that  each  man's  self  has  even  to  himself  much  that  is 
most  mysterious  and  seemingly  inscrutable.  Around 
each  man's  little  sphere  of  self-knowledge  there 
stretches  immeasurable  self-ignorance. 

Self  may  be  the  one  thing  we  know  best.  It  is 
certainly  the  one  thing  which  we  have  always  with 
us.  Yet  our  knowledge  of  it  is  of  the  same  limited 
and  defective  kind  as  our  knowledge  of  the  other 
ultimate  objects  of  knowledge.  The  very  fact  that 
self  is  the  universal  element  in  cognition  makes  it 
impossible  that  it  should  be  apprehended  as  either 
an  exclusively  and  completely  known  object  or  as  a 

385 


PAKTIAL    OE    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

directly  and  entirely  known  subject.  Hence  self- 
knowledge  seems  to  be  at  once  the  most  certain  and 
the  most  mysterious  kind  of  knowledge. 

Self  involves  many  great  mysteries.  Its  origin 
is  a  mystery,  and  one  which  it  has  been  attempted 
to  elucidate  by  various  forms  of  creationism,  emana- 
tionism,  and  traducianism,  none  of  which  are  gen- 
erally recognised  as  satisfactory.  The  seat  of  self  is 
a  mystery.  Many  have  endeavoured  to  localise  it, 
to  trace  it  to  some  focus  or  nerve-centre  of  the  bodily 
organism.  Apparently  they  have  as  yet  failed.  To 
refer  it  to  the  brain  is  no  explanation  so  long  as  the 
relations  between  the  brain  on  the  one  hand  and 
consciousness  or  psychical  activity  on  the  other  are 
not  much  better  known  than  they  as  yet  are.  The 
unity  of  the  self  is  a  mystery.  It  is  a  marvellously 
complex  unity,  one  which  includes  all  that  the  mind 
is  and  is  capable  of, — its  self-activity,  its  states  of 
sentiency  and  emotion,  its  intellectual  operations,  its 
moral  and  religious  endowments, — and  it  is  never- 
theless the  most  perfect  type  of  creaturely  self- 
identity.  Hence  its  simplicity  is  as  exceptional  as 
its  complexity.  Its  ubiquity  in  relation  to  the  body 
is  a  mystery.  Its  action  on  the  body  is  co-extensive 
with  the  body,  yet  it  has  no  extension  and  is  indi- 
visible. Its  ubiquity  with  reference  to  the  l)ody  may 
be  deemed  like  the  Divine  ubiquity  with  reference  to 
the  universe,  inasmuch  as  the  human  self  is  present 
throughout  the  whole  body  as  regards  power  yet 
does  not  occupy  different  points  of  space  by  different 
parts  of  its  own  mass.  The  union  of  spirit  and 
matter,  mind  and  body,  in  each  human  self,  although 

386 


AGNOSTICISM    AS    TO    THE    WORLD 

an  indubitable  fact,  is  a  no  less  indubitable  mystery, 
— a  problem  which  has  occupied  the  minds  of  theo- 
logians and  philosophers  in  many  ages  and  lands, 
but  which  is  still  unsolved.  Further,  the  destination, 
like  the  origination,  of  the  self  is  a  great  mystery, 
and  also  one  of  intensely  practical  interest.  Hence 
many  vain  hypotheses  have  in  all  ages  been  current 
regarding  it.  Hence  also  scepticism  as  to  the  worth 
of  all  thought  on  the  subject  is  wide-spread.  Doubt- 
less the  truth  regarding  it  lies  between  the  extremes 
of  imaginative  or  dogmatic  credulity  and  agnostic 
unbelief.  The  right  attitude  towards  it  is  conscious- 
ness of  our  need  of  fuller  light  regarding  it,  and  a 
reasonable  faith  that  with  the  growth  of  self-knowl- 
edge and  growth  in  the  knowledge  of  God  and  His 
works  all  needed  light  will  not  fail  to  be  thrown  on  it. 
As  each  human  self  is,  as  we  have  just  seen,  so 
mysterious  even  to  itself,  why  should  knowledge 
even  of  the  Divine  self  be  deemed  impossible  merely 
because  of  mysteriousness?  Why  should  the  mys- 
teries connected  with  God's  nature  and  ways  be 
deemed  inconsistent  with  a  real  and  progressive 
knowledge  of  God,  when  such  mysteries  as  those 
which  have  just  been  referred  to  are  certainly  not 
incompatible  with  any  man's  knowledge  of  himself, 
or  of  any  other  human  self?  Self-knowledge  is  a  real 
and  most  valuable  knowledge,  in  which  it  must  be 
a  man's  own  fault  if  he  fail  to  make  steady  progress ; 
and  encompassed  as  it  is  with  mystery  it  is  not  only, 
within  its  own  limits,  of  all  our  knowledge  the  surest, 
but  also  the  key  to  all  other  knowledge  than  self- 
knowledge.    Each  man  is  a  self,  and,  in  the  measure 

387 


PAETIAL    OE    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

that  he  knows  himself,  is  capable  of  knowing  any 
other  human  self.  Each  man  as  a  self  has  a  body 
far  more  intimately  related  and  thoroughly  subject 
to  him  than  are  any  other  corporeal  things,  and  a 
knowledge  of  his  own  body  makes  the  knowledge  of 
all  other  corporeal  things  comparatively  easy  to  him 
of  acquirement.  Each  man  as  a  self  is  both  soul 
and  body.  Hence  he  can  learn  to  know  his  fellow- 
men  as  both  spiritual  and  physical  beings.  Hence 
he  can  even  learn  to  regard  the  Universe  itself  as 
a  mighty  whole  whose  body  is  Nature  and  whose 
soul  is  God. 

IV.    AGNOSTICISM    AS    TO    THE    WORLD 

By  the  term  world  is  here  meant  what  is  called 
the  external  world,  and,  consequently,  it  is  equiva- 
lent in  signification  to  physical  nature  and  the  mate- 
rial or  corporeal  universe.  The  terms  nature,  world, 
and  universe  may  all  serve  to  designate  the  second 
ultimate  object  of  knowledge,  if  only  it  be  under- 
stood that  they  are  not  so  used  in  the  widest  sense 
which  they  can  bear,  one  in  which  they  are  not  un- 
frequently  employed.  They  may  be  so  applied  as  to 
include  what  is  meant  by  the  terms  which  denote 
either  of  the  other  ultimates  of  knowledge,  but 
should  manifestly  not  be  so  applied  here.  Here  by 
the  word  nature  is  to  be  understood  merely  physical, 
not  psychical,  nature;  by  world,  the  material  world 
as  distinguished  from  any  real  or  imaginary  spiritual 
world;  and  by  universe,  the  whole  system  of  bodily 
or  corporeal  objects.  In  justice  to  the  materialist, 
as  well  as  to  avoid  ambiguity,  I  must  so  employ  them, 

388 


GEEATNESS    AND    LITTLENESS    OF    NATURE 

A  self-consistent  and  thorough  materialist  cannot 
admit  that  there  is  any  nature  except  physical  nature, 
any  world  which  is  incorporeal,  any  such  reality  as 
either  a  spiritual  self  or  a  Divine  Being,  But  he  has 
never  succeeded  in  justifying  his  opinion,  or  proving 
more  than  what  no  one  denies,  namely,  that  the 
physical  are,  so  far  as  human  knowledge  extends, 
closely  conjoined  and  associated;  that  selves  or  sub- 
jects are  intimately  related  to  non-selves  or  objects; 
that  mind  is  united  to  matter,  consciousness  to  what 
is  corporeal.  All  that  we  freely  grant  while  decid- 
edly rejecting  his  materialism.  God  cannot  be  rea- 
sonably thought  of  otherwise  than  as  everywhere 
present  and  active  in  the  universe.  Human  selves 
are  certainly  present  in  the  body  here  on  earth,  and 
other  selves  may  very  possibly  be  similarly  present 
in  other  planets.  Merely  as  bodily  objects  all  men 
are  as  truly  parts  of  the  material  world  as  any  other 
bodily  objects.  But  men  are  not  mere  objects,  mere 
bodies;  they  are  also  subjects,  selves,  beings  that  are 
conscious  of  their  own  existence,  feelings,  percep- 
tions, volitions,  judgments,  (fee;  and  as  such  each 
man  is  what  the  material  universe  is  not.  Hence  all 
men  are  so  far  differentiated  from  all  physical 
nature,  from  the  whole  corporeal  world.  The  world 
in  so  far  as  known  to  us  is  not  a  subject  or  self,  not  a 
conscious  ego  or  spiritual  being.  It  is  a  vast  material 
system  composed  exclusively  of  objects  or  bodies. 

Sublime  and  marvellous,  therefore,  although  the 
world  even  in  the  sense  indicated  is,  it  cannot  be 
reasonably  regarded  otherwise  than  as  lower  than  the 
least  of  the  self-conscious  and  rational  creatures  con- 

389 


PAKTIAL    OR    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

tained  in  it.  Feeling  and  thought,  and  especially 
love  and  righteousness,  although  not  themselves  of 
the  world,  are  what  give  to  the  world  its  glory  and 
chief  value.  To  that  precious  truth  Pascal  has  given 
exquisite  expression  in  words  widely  and  familiarly 
knoAvn,  but  which  will  only  be  deemed  superficial  or 
trite  by  the  foolish: — 

"  Man  is  the  feeblest  reed  in  nature,  but  he  is  a  reed  that 
thinks.  It  is  not  necessary  that  the  entire  universe  should 
arm  itself  to  crush  him.  A  vapour,  a  drop  of  water,  suf- 
fices to  kill  him.  But  though  the  universe  should  crush 
him,  man  would  still  be  more  noble  than  that  which  kills 
him,  because  he  knows  that  he  dies,  while  the  universe 
knows  nothing  of  the  advantage  which  it  has  over  him. 
Hence  all  our  dignity  consists  in  thought.  It  is  by  this, 
not  by  the  space  or  time  which  we  cannot  fill,  that  we  are 
to  elevate  ourselves.  Let  us  labour,  therefore,  to  think 
ai'ight :  behold  there  the  beginning  of  morality."  ' 

In  those  words  Pascal  reminds  us  alike  of  the  gi'eat- 
ness  and  littleness  of  the  universe,  and  at  the  same 
time  of  our  own  littleness  yet  possible  greatness. 

Man  is  a  mere  transient  speck  on  the  surface  of  the 
earth,  and  his  strength  is  as  nothing  in  comparison 
with  the  power  of  the  universe.  Yet  he  can  do  what 
it  cannot,  and  make  himself  far  superior  to  it,  for 
he  has  reason  and  conscience.  Right  thinking  tran- 
scends in  worth  all  material  greatness,  yet  there  is 
what  is  far  superior  even  to  it.  The  glory  of  right 
thinking  is  that  it  makes  possible  morality,  and  is 
the  principle  and  instrument  of  ethical  excellence. 
Were  there  a  merely  material  universe, — were  there 
nothing  in  creation  to  reveal  intelligence  and  love 

■  Pensees  de  Pascal^  t    ii.  p.  84  (ed.  Faug^re). 
390 


OTHER  WORLDS  MAY  BE  INHABITED 

and  minister  to  the  needs  of  sentient  and  moral 
beings, — the  question,  What  is  the  good  of  it?  would 
be  one  which  could  be  neither  asked  nor  answered. 
It  has  been  told  of  Coleridge  that  when  asked.  What 
can  be  the  use  of  the  stars  if  they  are  not  inhabited? 
his  reply  was,  "  Perhaps  it  may  be  to  show  that  dirt 
is  cheap."  And  whimsical  as  such  a  suggestion  may 
well  seem,  would  it  not  be  difficult  to  suggest  a  bet- 
ter could  be  shown  that  none  of  the  enormous  ma- 
terial worlds  visible  from  our  earth  had  any  living 
and  conscious  creatures,  any  rational  or  moral  beings, 
in  them?  Considering  how  multitudinous  and  im- 
mense the  starry  worlds  are,  no  wise  man,  I  think, 
will  venture  to  pronounce  them  uninhabited  until  he 
has  evidence  enough  for  believing  them  to  be  so. 
Astronomers  have  counted  vastly  more  than  a  hun- 
dred millions  of  stars  which  are  not  planets  but  suns, 
around  which  planets  are  probably  revolving  as  our 
earth  and  its  companion  planets  are  revolving  round 
our  sun.  The  planets  of  those  far-off  suns  may  be 
as  large  or  larger  than  those  in  our  system,  but 
owing  to  their  distance  from  the  earth  they  are  in- 
visible to  our  astronomers  even  through  their  most 
powerful  telescopes.  Is  it  credible  that  the  millions 
of  worlds  in  the  universe,  our  own  only  excepted,  are 
all  mere  masses  of  material  dross,  are  all  empty  tene- 
ments? If  it  be  found  that  they  are  so,  agnostic 
atheists  will  have  a  far  weightier  reason  for  their  un- 
belief than  any  which  they  have  as  yet  been  able  to 
urge.  ]^o  such  discovery,  however,  seems  in  the  least 
likely  to  be  made.  Far  more  probable  is  it  that 
other  worlds  are  so  far  like  our  own  as  to  be  ruled 

391 


PARTIAL    OR    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

and  developed  not  only  in  accordance  with  the  same 
physical  laws,  bnt  also  with  essentially  the  same  ra- 
tional and  moral  laws.  To  leap  to  the  conclusion 
that  nowhere  except  on  earth  are  there  sentient,  in- 
telligent, and  moral  beings,  seems  to  show  a  credulity 
which  can  have  no  other  sources  than  human  conceit 
or  agnostic  atheism  itself.  To  believe  that  the  whole 
material  universe,  inconceivably  vast  although  it  be, 
is  under  the  same  government  as  that  which  rules  on 
earth,  may  be  incapable  of  being  confirmed  either  by 
strict  logical  demonstration  or  scientific  observation. 
It  is,  however,  a  manifestly  reasonable  faith.  Until 
disproved,  the  balance  of  reason  seems  to  be  clearly 
on  the  side  of  those  who  think  of  other  worlds  than 
our  own  as  not  wholly  unlike  our  own,  not  merely 
what  I  have  called  masses  of  material  dross  and  empty 
tenements,  but  rather  as  the  many  mansions  and  vast 
realms  which  the  Author,  Father,  and  Ruler  of  all 
has  provided  for  the  manifestation  of  His  own  nature 
and  for  the  welfare  of  His  creatures,  children,  and 
subjects. 

The  external  world,  what  is  called  the  physical 
universe,  has  not  always  been  regarded  as  merely 
physical.  It  has  often,  and  at  all  stages  of  culture, 
had  life  and  consciousness  attributed  to  it.  Nature- 
worship  has  been  a  very  prevalent  form  of  worship, 
and  one  which  has.  assumed  many  phases.  The  heav- 
ens and  the  earth  were  widely  honoured  in  ancient 
times  as  the  father  and  mother  of  the  gods.  The 
stars,  the  winds,  rivers,  mountains,  and  even  what 
seem  to  us  the  most  insignificant  of  creatures,  have 
been  deified.     The  very  stocks  and  stones  have  been 

392 


XO  ABSOLUTE  KNOWLEDGE  OF  MATTEE 

invested  with  the  attributes  of  personality  and  wor- 
shipped. Philosophy  has  been  influenced  by  that 
crude  theology  and  has  followed  in  the  same  course. 
Hylozoism,  which  ascribes  to  matter  life,  self-activity, 
and  other  psychical  properties,  was  a  prevalent  form 
of  Greek  philosophy  throughout  its  whole  history; 
reappeared  in  force  at  the  Renaissance;  received  in 
later  times  the  approval  even  of  a  Cudworth  and  H. 
More;  found  in  France  during  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury Diderot,  Robinet,  and  other  advocates;  and  still 
has  adherents  in  contemporary  monists,  as,  e.g.,  in  S. 
Hartmann  and  Hackel.  All  pantheism  strictly  so 
called  seems  to  proceed  on  the  assumption  that  God 
and  the  world  are  essentially  identical.  But  wher- 
ever such  identification  is  completely  effected  the 
pantheism  ceases  to  be  a  true  theism,  and  indeed 
issues  either  in  atheism  or  acosmism, — either  in  the 
absorption  of  God  in  the  world  or  of  the  world  in 
God.  Hence  also  it  inevitably  leads  either  to  mys- 
ticism or  to  scepticism,  both  of  which  can  be  shown 
to  have  always  led  to  the  sacrifice,  or  rather  suicide, 
of  reason.  It  is  well  to  recognise  that  God  and  the 
universe  are  intimately  connected,  but  most  unwise 
to  regard  them  as  one  and  the  same.  Such  a  con- 
fusion of  the  Divine  and  the  corporeal,  it  must  be 
added,  leaves  no  solid  foundation  for  the  physical 
sciences.  If  the  world  be  one  with  God,  if  it  be  an 
infinite  and  eternal  self  or  spirit  with  all  the  attri- 
butes of  a  self  or  spirit  in  supreme  perfection,  how 
can  mechanics,  physics,  chemistry,  physiology,  &c., 
be  trustworthy  as  sciences?  To  the  extent  that  mat- 
ter is  dematerialised,  spiritualised,  and  deified,  should 

393 


PAETIAL    Oil    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

it  not  be  withdrawn  from  the  spheres  of  knowledge 
with  which  the  physical  sciences  are  now  conversant, 
and  transferred  somewhere  else  where  it  can  be  dealt 
with  as  a  kind  of  psychology  and  theology?  Logical 
consistency  would  seem  to  demand  the  transference. 
There  can  be  no  doubt,  however,  that  the  practical 
result  of  it  would  be  the  bankruptcy  of  the  sciences 
referred  to. 

The  world  of  bodies  is  closely  connected  with  the 
world  of  selves.  In  order  that  there  may  be  knowl- 
edge, the  first  and  second  ultimate  objects  of  knowl- 
edge must  conjoin  and  co-operate.  The  cognition  of 
matter  implies  not  only  the  presence  of  matter  but  a 
mind's  apprehension  of  it.  The  world  is  wholly  un- 
known to  us  except  as  effectively  related  to  us.  We 
have  no  non-relative,  no  so-called  absolute  knowledge 
of  it.  In  that  respect,  however,  knowledge  of  the 
world  is  only  like  all  other  knowledge.  The  knowl- 
edge even  of  our  own  selves  is  no  absolute  knowledge. 
We  can,  it  is  true,  make  ourselves,  and  often  do  make 
ourselves,  the  objects  as  well  as  the  subjects  of  our 
knowledge,  but  we  never  thereby  so  separate  the  self 
as  subject  and  the  self  as  object  as  to  make  either 
independent  of  or  uninfluenced  by  the  other.  In 
studying  the  workings  of  our  own  minds  we  are 
even  more  apt  to  err  through  subjective  faults  than 
in  studying  the  operations  of  external  nature.-  We 
neither  perceive  nor  conceive  what  either  matter  or 
mind  is  in  itself.  In  both  cases  such  knowledge  as 
we  can  attain  is  not  a  subjective  and  an  objective 
knowledge  which  we  can  treat  as  separate  or  separa- 
ble.    It  is  "  an  indivisible  subjective-objective  knowl- 

394 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  THE  EXTEHKAL  WORLD 

edge,"  and  there  is  no  other  knowledge,  as  Ferrier 
especially  has  conclusively  shown.  We  can  have  a 
real  knowledge  both  of  matter  and  mind,  both  of  an 
object  and  a  subject,  the  one  knowable  and  the  other 
knowing,  but  we  can  know  neither  apart,  and  that 
for  the  simple  reason  that  when  apart  there  is  no 
knowledge.  The  objective  side  of  knowledge  per  se 
is  not  perceivable  or  even  conceivable  by  any  human 
mind.  It  is,  as  Ferrier  says,  "  what  we  can  neither 
know  nor  be  ignorant  of  any  more  than  we  can  think 
of  a  centreless  circle  or  of  a  stick  with  only  one  end." 
Sheer  nonsense,  the  entirely  inconceivable,  is  neither 
knowledge  nor  ignorance.  A  subjective  side  without 
an  objective  side  is,  of  course,  as  absurd  as  an  objec- 
tive without  a  subjective.  All  our  conceptions  of  the 
world  are  dependent  on  our  perceptions  of  it,  and  the 
latter  are  all  largely  what  they  are  not  merely  through 
the  world  and  its  contents  being  in  themselves  what 
they  are,  but  also  owing  to  what  our  senses  and  bodily 
and  mental  constitutions  are.  Outward  nature  pre- 
sents a  very  different  appearance  to  a  clear  and 
healthy  eye  than  to  a  jaundiced  and  diseased  one. 
"  The  eye  sees  only  what  it  brings  with  it  the  power 
of  seeing."  Nor  is  it  otherwise  with  the  mind.  In 
a  pure  and  pious  soul  both  the  world  and  God  are 
quite  otherwise  reflected  than  in  a  selfish  and  sensual 
one. 

There  certainly  is  an  agnosticism  which  displays 
itself  as  doubt  or  disbelief  of  the  external  world. 
The  ordinary  man,  it  is  true,  does  not  entertain  such 
doubt  or  disbelief.  Although  at  exceptional  moments 
he  may  feel  uncertain  whether  he  is  awake  or  asleep, 

395 


PAETIAL   OE   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

perceiving  or  dreaming,  seeing  or  merely  imagining 
what  he  sees,  his  ordinary  condition  is  that  of  trust 
in  the  reality  of  the  objects  of  the  senses.  That  does 
not  imply  that  he  conceives  himself  to  apprehend  by 
sense  things  exactly  as  they  are  to  all  other  beings. 
An  observant  savage  cannot  fail  to  perceive  that  the 
senses  of  many  animals  differ  from,  and  are  even  in 
various  respects  superior  to,  his  own.  The  actions 
and  habits  of  brute  creatures  plainly  show  that  odours, 
savours,  and  colours  cannot  be  to  them  just  what  they 
are  to  men.  And  men  themselves  differ  greatly  from 
one  another  in  respect  to  those  things.  Certainly 
nothing  warrants  us  in  attributing  to  common  hu- 
manity faith  in  metaphysical  "  things-in-themselves." 
Such  faith  is  confined  to  a  comparatively  few  phi- 
losophers. The  relativity  of  knowledge,  on  the  other 
hand,  is,  more  or  less  distinctly,  recognised  even  by 
those  who  have  not  the  least  tincture  of  philosophy. 
To  believe  in  an  external  world  is  one  thing;  to  be- 
lieve in  an  external  world  per  se  and  not  cum  alio, 
— unperceived,  that  is  to  say,  by  any  mind  human  or 
superhuman, — is  another  and  very  different  thing. 
The  former  belief  is  intelligible,  the  latter  is  unin- 
telligible. To  affirm  that  the  world  is  external  and 
material  merely  implies  that  it  is  not  composed  of  the 
subjective  states  and  experiences  of  sentient  beings, 
whereas  to  affirm  that  it  is  external  and  material  per 
se — i.e.,  without  any  reference  to  a  knowing  mind  or 
minds — is  equivalent  to  asserting  that  it  is  an  object 
or  complex  of  objects  which  can  have  no  subject,  and 
which  is  entirely  non-phenomenal,  imperceptible,  and 
unintelligible. 

396 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  AN  EXTEENAL  WOKLD 

Agnosticism  in  the  form  of  doubt  or  disbelief  as  to 
the  external  world  naturally  arises  from  the  disap- 
pointments which  that  world  produces.  The  things 
of  sense  are  limited,  unsatisfying,  and  often  deceptive. 
The  mind  cannot  find  in  them  the  reality,  self-con- 
sistency, or  satisfaction  for  which  it  craves.  Hence 
a  main  cause  of  the  divine  unrest  which  impels  the 
human  spirit  to  seek  for  higher  things  and  exercise 
religious  and  philosophical  thought.  And  it  is  only 
when  such  thought  has  come  to  be  earnestly  exerted 
and  considerably  developed  that  agnosticism  as  to  the 
external  world  has  asserted  its  right  to  recognition. 
So  long  as  it  is  not  felt  to  be  necessary  to  subject  to 
criticism  the  perceptions  of  the  senses  they  are  re- 
garded as  the  most  reliable  data  or  materials  of  knowl- 
edge, but  when  they  come  to  be  questioned  and  tested 
the  naive  faith  in  their  trustworthiness  begins  to  fade 
and  fall  away.  Reasons  for  doubt  emerge  and  mul- 
tiply. It  is  seen  that  the  certainty  spontaneously 
attributed  to  the  senses  is  excessive;  that  their  testi- 
mony is  much  more  limited,  relative,  and  insecure 
than  had  been  supposed.  The  consequences  are  that 
man's  attitude  towards  the  world  is  radically  altered; 
that  the  human  mind  enters  on  a  new  era  of  its 
history;  and  that  agnosticism  as  to  external  things 
appears  either  in  religious  or  metaphysical  forms  of 
illusionism. 

In  India,  where  from  very  early  times  the  great 
concern  of  life  was  felt  to  be  religion,  the  Hindu 
mind  worked  out  in  Brahmanism  the  doctrine  that 
the  Divine  was  the  sole  reality,  the  all  in  all,  and  yet 
the  wholly  unknown  or  even  unknowable,  while  it 

397 


PAETIAL    OE    LIM1TP:D    AGNOSTICISM 

represented  the  material  world  as  but  "  the  veil  of 
Maya/'  a  delusion  and  snare  by  which  the  truth  is 
hidden  from  men.  In  Buddhism  scepticism  as  to  the 
reality  and  worth  of  physical  things  was  not  less  radi- 
cal than  in  Brahmanism.  Deliverance  from  the  coils 
of  existence  seemed  to  its  adherents  true  blessedness, 
the  repression  of  individuality  a  constant  duty,  and 
Nirvana  the  chief  good. 

It  was  not  so  in  Greece.  Not  ascetic  withdrawal 
from  the  world  but  complete  self-development  in  it 
was  generally  felt  by  the  ancient  Greeks  to  be  the 
true  ideal  of  life.  They  were  keenly  alive  to  the 
beauties  of  nature,  felt  to  the  full  the  joy  of  life,  and 
rejoiced  in  the  search  for  truth,  alike  for  the  sake  of 
the  search  and  for  the  sake  of  the  truth.  What  Less- 
ing  said  of  himself  with  respect  to  truth — namely, 
that  he  even  preferred  the  pursuit  of  it  to  the  posses- 
sion, the  chase  to  the  prey — may  be  said  of  most  of 
the  old  Greek  philosophers.  In  that  respect  they  were 
very  unlike  the  chief  Oriental  teachers  with  whom 
doctrine  or  devotion  was  ever  the  main  thing.  And 
yet  when  philosophical  thought  in  Greece  gave  rise  to 
ontological  systems,  the  solutions  of  the  problem  as  to 
the  reality  and  existence  of  the  external  world  given 
to  those  systems  had  much  in  common  with  those 
of  the  Hindu  theosophists.  Even  the  initiators  of 
Greek  philosophy  seriously  occupied  themselves  with 
questions  as  to  the  difference  between  appearance  and 
reality, — such  questions  as.  What  is  and  what  merely 
seems  to  be  ?  How  is  reality  to  be  distinguished  from 
semblance?  By  what  criterion  is  truth  to  be  sepa- 
rated from  error? — and  thereby  showed  that  they  felt 

398 


AGNOSTICISM  AND  THE  EXTERNAL  WORLD 

how  difficult  it  was  to  educe  science  from  single  ma- 
terial objects,  or,  in  other  words,  to  rise  from  par- 
ticulars to  universals  so  as  to  acquire  true  science,  a 
wholly  trustworthy  knowledge.  Plato,  greatly  influ- 
enced by  Socrates,  was,  however,  the  first  to  deal  with 
the  subject  in  a  really  critical  and  comprehensive  way. 
His  precursors  had  differed  greatly  as  to  what  was 
being  (reality)  and  what  appearance  (illusion),  and 
so  had  manifestly  contradicted  one  another,  and  failed 
to  rise  above  the  world  of  deceptions  and  to  enter 
into  the  world  of  eternal  verities.  He  himself  sharply 
distinguished  reality  from  appearance,  traced  all  real- 
ity to  the  eternal,  the  universal,  the  ideal,  to  first 
truths  and  ultimate  ends,  to  the  Supreme  Good,  the 
Absolute,  the  Divine,  and  relegated  the  world  of 
changeful  sensuous  existence,  of  mere  physical  par- 
ticulars, to  the  limbo  of  non-reality  and  self-contra- 
diction. The  world  of  the  senses  he  held  to  be, 
except  in  so  far  as  participant  in  the  ideas  of  an 
eternal  and  unchangeable  world,  a  false  and  imag- 
inary world.  Ideas  as  he  conceived  of  them  seemed 
to  him  to  be  the  only  realities,  and  the  material 
objects  regarded  by  others  as  the  only  realities  he 
deemed  to  be,  properly  speaking,  unreal.  As  Groom 
Robertson  has  well  said,  "  Platonic  Realism  and  Pla- 
tonic Idealism  are  one  and  the  same  doctrine,  Plato 
being  a  Realist  because  of  the  reality  he  ascribed  to 
ideas,  and  an  Idealist  because  it  is  ideas  to  which  he 
ascribed  reality."  ^  Once  the  claims  of  idealism  had 
been  so  advocated  as  they  were  by  Plato  they  could 
never  again   be   ignored   by  philosophical   thinkers. 

>  Mements  of  General  Philosophy,  p.  72. 
399 


PAETIAL    OR   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

Once  the  reality  of  what  appeared  to  be  an  external 
world  was  clearly  shown  to  demand  proof,  the  ques- 
tion, How  is  its  reality  to  be  either  proved  or  dis- 
proved? necessarily  came  to  be  recognised  as  a  funda- 
mental and  most  important  one.  The  history  of 
philosophy  amply  attests  that  it  has  been  regarded  as 
such  by  many  of  the  clearest  and  profoundest  of 
human  thinkers.  It  also  shows  that,  like  the  ques- 
tion as  to  the  existence  and  reality  of  a  spiritual 
world,  the  question  as  to  the  existence  and  reality  of 
a  physical  world  is  one  which  has  come  to  stay. 
Long  as  it  has  already  been  with  us  there  are  no 
signs  of  our  getting  rid  of  it. 

From  the  time  of  Plato  to  the  close  of  Greco- 
Koman  history  scepticism  as  to  the  material  world 
was  as  prevalent  in  the  philosophic  schools  as  scepti- 
cism with  regard  to  the  spiritual  world.  In  medieval 
Europe  there  was  comparatively  little  scepticism  of 
either  kind.  That  was  due,  however,  to  the  alto- 
gether exceptional  strength  of  the  convictions  and 
causes  which  during  that  section  of  history  gave  an 
extraordinary  predominance  to  faith  over  reason,  to 
traditional  dogma  over  personal  investigation,  and  to 
social  authority  over  private  judgment.  For  many 
medieval  doctors  the  first  verse  in  Genesis  must  have 
seemed  a  conclusive  reason  for  belief  in  the  reality  of 
the  external  universe.  The  great  mental  and  social 
revolution,  however,  which  introduced  the  modern  era 
of  philosophy,  received  into  its  bosom  the  thoughts 
and  theories  of  the  philosophers  of  antiquity  regard- 
ing the  external  world,  and  gave  them  fresh  life 
which  produced  new  developments.     Hence   during 

400 


AS   TO   AN   EXTERNAL   WORLD 

the  whole  history  of  modern  philosophy  there  has 
been  a  continuous  criticism  of  the  grounds  and  vari- 
ous forms  of  belief  in  a  material  world, — a  continu- 
ous criticism  which  has  greatly  influenced  the  entire 
course  and  character  of  modern  philosophy.  That  it 
has  done  so  for  good  cannot  reasonably  be  doubted. 
Modern  scepticism  as  to  the  reality  of  an  external 
world  will  be  denied  by  the  majority  of  the  students 
of  philosophy  to  have  succeeded  in  proving  itself 
true,  but  few  competent  judges  among  them  will  fail 
to  acknowledge  that  it  has  amply  justified  its  exist- 
ence and  activity  by  the  extent  to  which  it  has  con- 
tributed to  the  general  progress  of  philosophy  and 
even  of  science. 

There  is,  I  believe,  a  widely  prevalent  impression 
that  while  there  has  been  a  vast  amount  of  doubt  or 
disbelief  as  to  the  existence  of  God,  there  has  been 
little  or  none  as  to  the  existence  of  a  material  world. 
It  is  one,  however,  which  is  not  in  accordance  with 
facts,  and  which  can  exist  only  where  there  is  great 
ignorance  of  the  history  of  philosophical  thought. 
The  external  world  has  no  more  had  immunity  from 
agnostic  attacks  than  the  other  ultimates  of  knowl^ 
edge.  The  most  rapid  glance  over  the  history  even 
of  modem  philosophy  is  sufficient  to  show  us  that 
agnostic  solutions  of  the  problem  as  to  the  existence 
of  the  world  have  been  almost  as  common  as  agnostic 
solutions  of  the  problem  as  to  the  existence  of  God. 
Descartes  and  his  followers  regarded  matter  as  an 
object  not  of  perception  but  merely  of  conception, 
and  rested  the  reasonableness  of  belief  in  an  external 
world  on  faith  in  the  Divine  veracity.     Malebranche 

401 


PARTIAL   OR   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

held  all  physical  things  to  be  only  visible  in  God. 
Agnosticism  as  to  matter  was  implied  in  the  panthe- 
ism of  Spinoza  and  in  Locke's  view  of  secondary 
qualities.  It  found  a  much  clearer  and  more  con- 
sistent expression  in  Berkeley's  immaterialism.  Ac- 
cording to  Berkeley  all  our  sensations  and  perceptions 
of  so-called  material  objects  are  purely  subjective 
phenomena,  beyond  which  there  is  no  reason  to  in- 
terpose anything  between  them  and  the  supra-phe- 
nomenal power  of  which  the  sensible  world  is  the 
expression;  that  is  to  say,  he  thought  God  and  the 
soul  to  be  a  sufficient  explanation  of  all  the  facts 
which  ordinary  men  and  the  common  run  of  philoso- 
phers are  accustomed  to  ascribe  to  a  real  physical 
universe.  Hume  clearly  saw  the  incompatibility  of 
sensism  and  materialism,  and  that  a  thorough  sensism 
like  his  own  left  no  grounds  for  belief  in  a  physical 
universe  or  in  physical  science.  J.  S.  Mill's  expla- 
nation of  the  belief  in  an  external  world  was  hardly 
less  sceptical  in  character,  attempting  as  it  did  to 
account  for  the  widespread  belief  in  the  reality  of 
the  world  by  the  association  of  ideas  and  the  mind's 
capability  of  expecting  them,  and  thus  reducing  the 
world  of  matter  to  a  mere  aggregate  of  possibilities 
of  sensation.  The  Idealism  of  Kant,  Fichte,  Schell- 
ing,  and  Hegel,  and  the  later  forms  of  it  which  have 
appeared  in  all  countries  where  philosophy  is  actively 
cultivated,  prove  that  idealism  is  not  less  prone  than 
sensism  to  originate  and  spread  sceptical  views  of  the 
material  world.  The  thesis  that  external  perception  is 
a  true  hallucination  has  been  maintained  by  Taine 
and  Rabier  with  an  ingenuity  which  has  gained  for  it 

402 


INCONSISTENCY  OF  MATERIALISM 

the  assent  of  a  considerable  number  of  contemporary 
psychologists. 

The  facts  just  referred  to  may  have  sufficed  to 
show  that  to  fancy  the  material  world  unassailable 
by  agnosticism  is  an  evidence  of  credulity  explicable 
only  by  ignorance.  The  purport  of  them  cannot  be 
much  affected  by  this  other  fact,  that  throughout  the 
whole  history  of  philosophy  there  has  been  a  species 
of  philosophy  which  has  maintained  matter  to  be  the 
only  ultimate  object  of  knowledge, — the  species  so 
well  known  as  materialism.  It  is  a  philosophy  com- 
paratively easy  to  popularise,  but  one  which  has 
seldom  been  found  to  satisfy  critical  and  reflective 
minds,  and  one  which  has  owed  such  success  as  it  has 
attained  more  to  the  rhetoric  than  to  the  logic  of  its 
advocates.  Not  a  few  so-called  materialists  have 
been  wronged  by  being  so-called,  as,  e.g.,  among 
English  authors.  Hartley,  Priestley,  the  elder  Dar- 
win, and  Home  Tooke,  all  generally  designated  ma- 
terialists, but  whose  "  materialism  "  did  not  imply 
denial  of  the  existence  of  God,  or  exclude  faith  in 
Him  as  the  author  of  nature  and  the  father  of  spirits. 
Huxley  and  Herbert  Spencer  have  often  been  very 
improperly  described  as  materialists.  To  identify,  as 
is  frequently  done,  monism  with  materialism  is  an 
act  of  injustice  to  the  former,  seeing  that  the  latter, 
resolving  as  it  does  everything  into  what  is  indefi- 
nitely, if  not  infinitely,  divisible,  is  utterly  anti- 
monistic. 

Further,  materialism  strictly  so  called  is  always 
self-contradictory.  It  dogmatically  affirms  matter  to 
be  the  sum,  substance,  and  explanation  of  all  things, 

403 


PARTIAL    OE   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

yet  has  no  other  reason  to  give  for  the  very  existence 
of  matter  than  the  testimony  of  the  senses.  It  has 
always  to  support  itself  on  sensism,  and  therefore 
presupposes  what  it  pretends  to  account  for.  The 
very  senses,  sensations,  and  perceptions  on  which 
materialists  rely,  and  must  rely,  in  order  to  warrant 
either  their  account  of  matter  or  even  their  affirma- 
tion of  its  existence,  testify  against  them,  by  show- 
ing matter  to  be  not  even  conceivable  apart  from 
mind,  not  the  cause  and  substance  of  mind,  but  what 
is  as  dependent  on  mind  as  mind  is  on  it,  and  even 
more  so,  inasmuch  as  mind  may  be  its  own  object 
but  matter  cannot.  To  have  a  right  to  postulate 
matter  at  all  the  materialist  must  have  a  mind  in 
order  to  get  even  the  least  conception  of  matter,  and 
consequently  must  not  objectify  and  glorify  matter 
as  a  something  prior  to,  or  separable  from,  or  inde- 
pendent of  mind.  The  presupposition  of  materialism 
is  a  hysteron-proteron,  and  its  course  of  self -defensive 
ratiocination  is  a  see-saw  process  of  continuous  alter- 
nation which  never  reaches  self-consistency.  I  have 
already,  however,  treated  of  materialism  elsewhere 
so  fully,  both  expositorially  and  critically,  that  I 
have  no  desire  to  deal  further  with  it  here.^ 

Agnosticism  as  to  the  external  world  is  still  not 
only  possible  but  prevalent.  There  is  even  now  no 
generally  accepted  demonstration  of  the  reality  of 
such  a  world.  The  problem  as  to  matter  is  no  more 
solved  to  the  satisfaction  of  every  one  than  the 
problem  as  to  Deity.  While  as  fully  recognised  as 
it  ever  was  to  be  a  real  and  fundamental  philosophi- 
^AniCTheistic  Theories,  Lect.  II.-IV.* 
404 


CERTAINTY  AS  TO  EXTERN^AL  WORLD 

cal  problem,  it  is  still  one  which  is  as  much  under 
discussion  as  it  ever  was.  During  the  last  forty  or 
fifty  years  metaphysicians  and  psychologists  have 
been  concentrating  their  efforts  and  exerting  their 
utmost  ingenuity  in  attempts  to  answer  it,  and  have 
in  consequence  brought  to  light  various  interesting 
facts  in  the  departments  of  physiology,  psychology, 
and  general  philosophy.  They  may  thereby  fairly 
claim  to  have  considerably  contributed  to  the  explana- 
tion of  the  very  complex  and  comprehensive  process 
involved  in  the  gradual  acquisition  of  a  knowledge  of 
physical  nature.  They  cannot,  however,  reasonably 
pretend  to  have  made  it  impossible  plausibly  to  deny 
the  validity  of  perceptive  knowledge,  or  even  to  call 
in  question  the  very  existence  of  the  world  as  an  ex- 
ternal objective  reality.  Sceptical  subjectivism  can 
still  give  as  specious,  perhaps  even  more  specious, 
reasons  for  its  affirmations  than  it  did  before  Miiller, 
Helmholtz,  Fechner,  Wundt,  Stumpf,  Lipps,  and 
others  in  Germany,  and  their  coadjutors  in  France, 
Italy,  England,  and  the  United  States,  made  known 
the  results  of  their  investigations.  It  can  still  meet 
all  assertions  of  the  reality  of  an  external  world  with 
objections  entitled  to  receive  reasoned  answers,  and 
can  even  satisfactorily  prove  that  much  of  what  is  gen- 
erally regarded  as  objective  both  in  perceptual  and 
conceptual  knowledge  is  really  subjective. 

There  is  a  practically  universal  feeling  of  the  cer- 
tainty of  an  external  world  and  an  obtrusiveness  in 
the  presentation  of  the  things  of  that  world  which 
make  it  very  natural  for  mankind  to  suppose  that  there 
is  a  direct  and  immediate  apprehension  of  matter  far 

405 


PAETIAL    OR    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

superior  to  any  knowledge  we  can  have  of  God.  In 
reality,  however,  man  has  no  more  a  direct  and  imme- 
diate perception  of  matter  than  of  God.  By  not  one 
of  his  senses  is  matter  itself  apprehended.  At  the 
utmost  it  is  its  phenomena  or  properties  that  are  appre- 
hended, and  even  they  are  not  directly  or  immediately 
apprehended.  Our  supposed  immediate  apprehensions 
of  matter  are  states  of  mind  connected  with  matter 
through  the  action  on  our  sentient  organs  and  general 
mental  constitution  which  give  rise  to  the  phenomena 
that  we  call  physical,  although  they  are  largely  psy- 
chical. Perceptions  of  external  objects  are  dependent 
both  on  mental  activities  and  on  imperceptible  external 
causes  or  conditions,  such  as  ether-motions  without  and 
nerve-motions  within  the  organs  which  yield  sensa- 
tions, say,  of  vision,  touch,  taste,  &c.  All  the  ultimate 
objects  of  knowledge, — matter,  mind,  and  Deity, — are 
known  by  us  in  the  same  way.  It  is  not  by  attempting 
to  gaze  directly  into  their  ultimate  natures  or  spinning 
logical  cobwel>s  round  our  conceptions  of  them,  but 
by  laying  our  minds  open  to  receive  aright  the  impres- 
sions and  lessons  which  the  facts  themselves  can  alone 
convey  to  us,  that  we  come  to  know  them. 

The  manifestations  of  what  seem  to  be  the  contents 
of  the  world  of  matter  are  appearances  or  images 
beyond  which  lie  the  powers  that  by  their  action  on 
the  organs  of  sense  and  the  energies  of  the  mind  pro- 
duce those  appearances  or  images.  Hence  knowledge 
of  the  world  and  knowledge  of  God  are  only  to  be 
obtained  by  us  in  the  same  way, — only  by  a  con- 
tinuous and  rational  use  of  all  our  internal  powers 
acting   and  reacting   on   external   powers    and   the 

406 


EEVELATIONS    OF    MATTER 

impressions  produced  by  them.  It  is  not  attainable  in 
either  case  by  instantaneous  and  direct  perception, 
but  by  a  natural  and  gradual  process  which  is  much 
more  comprehensive  and  complicated  than  the  great 
majority  even  of  psychologists  seem  to  be  aware  of. 
As  regards  both  the  world  and  God  the  process  re- 
ferred to  depends  subjectively  on  the  constitution  of 
a  mind  seeking  to  know,  and  objectively  on  the  mani- 
festations of  the  world  or  God  to  a  mind  so  engaged. 
What  we  call  matter  reveals  to  us  not  only  itself 
but  also  human  selves  to  themselves,  and  even  God 
himself  to  thoughtful  men.  Each  man  manifests 
himself  to  other  men  by  the  motions  and  gestures 
of  his  body,  the  labours  of  his  hands  on  material 
things,  and  the  efforts  and  articulations  which  issue 
in  sounds  and  words  from  the  throat  and  lips,  &c. 
To  each  man  other  men  manifest  themselves  in  the 
same  ways.  In  like  manner  the  phenomena  of 
nature,  with  their  manifold  aspects,  peculiarities, 
combinations,  adaptations,  evolutions,  uses,  and  re- 
sults, are  media  through  which  the  Divine  Mind 
may  well  be  held  to  be  expressing  itself  to  other 
minds,  human  and  superhuman,  and  working  out 
great  issues.  That  our  knowledge  of  God  and  of 
the  world  are  to  a  great  extent  and  in  various  re- 
spects of  the  same  nature  is  a  very  important  fact 
and  well  worth  attentive  study.  But  important 
although  it  be  I  cannot  dwell  on  it  here.  Nor  is 
that  necessary.  It  has  often  been  referred  to  by 
English  writers,  and  once  at  least  most  elaborately 
and  conclusively  dealt  with.  The  ablest  exhibition 
of  the  parallelism  between  knowledge  of  God  and 

407 


PARTIAL    OR   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

knowledge  of  the  world  to  be  found  in  any  language 
is  that  contained  in  E,.  A.  Thompson's  Christian 
Theism  (Burnet  Prize  Treatise,  2  vols.  1855).  Ow- 
ing to  its  very  thoroughness,  however,  it  would  be 
useless  to  refer  non-metaphysical  readers  to  it,  but  I 
would  earnestly  recommend  to  all  my  readers  Mr. 
Thompson's  brief  and  condensed  statement  in  Prin- 
ciples of  Natural  Theology  (185Y)  of  the  positive 
argumentation  in  his  larger  treatise.  It  is  especially 
desirable  that  they  should  read  ch.  v.  pp.  70-98: 
"  Comparison  of  the  Principles  and  Processes  of  the 
Mind,  in  the  Attainment  of  its  Theological  and  its 
other  Knowledges."  The  twelve  parallels  there  ex- 
hibited by  comparison  of  the  character  and  processes 
implied  in  our  knowledge  of  God  with  those  implied 
in  other  knowledge  allowed  to  be  fundamental,  con- 
vincingly show  that  our  knowledge  of  God  is  not 
dependent  on  formal  demonstrations  but  given  us 
through  God's  own  manifestations  of  Himself  in  the 
facts  of  nature,  consciousness,  and  history,  and  in 
the  principles  and  conditions  of  our  intellectual  life. 
The  supposition  that  knowledge  of  matter  is  the 
most  certain,  immediate,  and  thorough  knowledge  is 
probably  widely  prevalent  among  the  uneducated 
and  unthoughtful,  but  it  is  entertained  by  few  if 
any  real  thinkers  or  men  of  scientific  reputation.  It 
is  quite  unfair,  although  it  has  often  been  done,  to 
describe  men  like,  say,  Huxley  and  Spencer,  as 
materialists.  Huxley's  agnosticism  was  agnosticism 
as  to  matter  itself.  It  implied  no  excess  of  confidence 
in  the  knowledge  of  matter  or  even  in  the  existence 
of  matter.     So  keen  and  clear  a  thinker  as  Huxley 

408 


HUXL5)Y'S    MATERIALISM 

could  not  possibly  be  a  materialist.  He  attempted, 
indeed,  to  express  all  knowledge  in  materialistic 
phraseology,  as  the  most  definite  and  self -consistent 
terminology  which  so-called  exact  science  is  able  to 
make  use  of,  but  he  took  care  to  explain  that  he 
regarded  such  phraseology  as,  in  reality,  "  a  sort  of 
shorthand  idealism."  He  maintained  that  "  what  we 
call  the  material  world  is  only  known  to  us  under  the 
forms  of  the  ideal  world  " ;  that  "  the  very  existence 
of  '  Matter  '  {'  Stoff  ')  and  '  Force  '  ('  Kraft ')  is,  at 
best,  a  highly  probable  hypothesis  " ;  that  "  our  cer- 
tain knowledge  does  not  go  beyond  our  states  of  con- 
sciousness ";  and  that  "  our  one  certainty  is  the  cer- 
tainty of  the  mental  world."  Those  fundamentals  of 
Huxley's  faith  are,  of  course,  far  from  sufficient  to 
prove  either  the  complete  self-consistency  or  general 
satisfactoriness  of  his  philosophical  creed,  but  they 
conclusively  show  that  he  was  no  materialist,  and 
that  he  clearly  recognised  self-consciousness  to  have 
a  priority  and  certainty  to  external  perception, — our 
knowledge  of  mind  to  be  deeper  and  truer  than  our 
knowledge  of  matter. 

There  is  still  less  reason  for  representing  Mr. 
Spencer  as  a  materialist.  Huxley  was  not  lacking 
in  spiritual  faith  and  reverence.  !Nor  is  Spencer 
lacking.  His  Infinite,  Absolute,  and  Unknowable, 
which  underlies,  pervades,  and  transcends  the  mate- 
rial, relative,  and  knowable,  is  obviously  to  him  no 
mere  mystery  or  even  mere  ideal,  but  of  all  realities 
the  most  real,  and  somehow  the  life  of  all  our  being 
and  the  light  of  all  our  seeing.  One  may  vastly 
prefer  the  Christian  idea  of  God,  but  it  is  no  mere 

409 


PARTIAL    OR    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

negation  of  God,  and  manifestly  while  Mr.  Spencer 
refuses  to  claim  knowledge  of  it  he  has  a  faith  in 
it  which  he  feels  to  be  deeper  and  truer  even  than 
any  attainable  knowledge  of  matter.  Those  who 
hold  that  they  may  humbly  claim  to  have  a  knowl- 
edge of  God  will,  of  course,  hold  that  such 
knowledge  need  not  be  less  true  and  profound  than 
knowledge  of  either  matter  or  finite  minds;  nay,  if 
truly  conscious  of  union  with  God  in  knowledge  they 
must  realise,  at  least  in  some  measure,  that  knowl- 
edge of  God  being  the  knowledge  which  God  most 
especially  gives  cannot  be  other  than  knowledge  at 
its  highest  and  best.  God  knows  us  completely,  and 
can  manifest  Himself  to  us  far  more  closely  and 
thoroughly  than  can  any  finite  beings  or  material 
objects.  To  a  human  spirit  there  can  be  no  experi- 
ence so  vital,  profound,  and  instinctive  as  the  spir- 
itual experience  which  rests  on  Divine  self-manifes- 
tation. 

It  is  quite  in  accordance  with  the  foregoing  obser- 
vations that  the  objections  which  have  been  urged, 
or  may  be  urged,  against  the  cognoscibility  of  an 
external  world  are  substantially  the  same  objections 
which  have  been,  or  may  be,  urged  against  the  cog- 
noscibility of  God.  The  arguments  employed  by 
Hamilton,  Mansel,  and  Spencer,  for  example,  to 
prove  that  God  cannot  be  known  are  of  the  same 
nature  as  the  arguments  which  Descartes,  Male- 
branche,  and  Hume  had  employed  to  show  that  there 
is  no  conclusive  evidence  for  belief  in  the  independ- 
ent reality  of  an  external  world.  The  agnostic  prin- 
ciples on  which  Hamilton  and  Mansel  rested  their 

410 


KNOWLEDGE   OF   MATTER   AND   GOD 

views  as  to  man's 'knowledge  of  God  cannot  be  con- 
fined to  that  or  any  special  sphere  of  alleged  or  con- 
ceivable knowledge,  but  may  be  as  appropriately  ap- 
plied in  the  same  way  to  any  or  every  other  such 
sphere.  The  principles  on  which  Hamilton  and 
Mansel  rested  their  defence  of  religious  agnosticism, 
— (a)  the  conditionedness  of  thought,  (&)  the  sub- 
jectivity of  sensations,  and  (c)  the  relativity  of 
knowledge, — are  true  and  most  important  principles 
when  correctly  understood  and  applied,  but  they  may 
be  seriously  misunderstood  and  ndsapplied,  and  were 
so  by  Hamilton  and  Mansel  and  their  too  trustful 
disciples.  When  rightly  understood  no  agnosticism 
of  any  kind  is  implied  in  them;  but  when  erroneous 
meanings  are  assigned  to  them,  and  to  all  of  them 
such  meanings  have  been  assigned,  they  necessarily 
lead  to  agnosticism.  That  will  be  made  apparent  at 
a  later  stage  when  reference  has  to  be  made  to  the 
religious  agnosticism  of  Hamilton  and  Mansel.  Both 
the  great  Scottish  and  the  great  English  logician 
failed  to  discriminate  the  different  meanings  which 
the  terms  in  their  so-called  "  laws  of  thought  "  could 
bear;  both  erroneously  interpreted  the  terms  they 
employed,  so  as  to  reject  their  true  and  proper  mean- 
ing, and  to  impose  on  them  significations  which  must 
necessarily  lead  to  sceptical  findings  as  to  God,  The 
same  propositions  interpreted  and  applied  in  the 
same  perverse  way  must  as  necessarily  lead  to  agnos- 
ticism as  to  matter  and  mind  as  agnosticism  with 
reference  to  God. 

The  imperfections   of  our  knowledge   of  matter 
ought  to  prevent   us   from   rashly  pronouncing   it 

411 


PAETIAL    OR    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

superior  to  knowledge  either  of  aniiul  or  of  Deity. 
By  none  of  our  senses  is  matter  known  otherwise 
than  indirectly  and  defectively.  What  matter  seems 
to  us  to  be  is  very  largely  not  what  itself  is  but  what 
our  senses  cause  it  to  appear  to  us  to  be.  The  various 
properties  of  material  things  must  necessarily  have 
appeared  very  different  to  the  innumerable  species  of 
animals  which  have  been  connected  with  them  and 
dependent  on  them  from  the  origination  of  creat- 
urely  life  countless  ages  ago  to  the  present  day. 
Throughout  all  stages  of  life  living  beings  of  every 
kind  have  been  gradually  modified  as  regards  size 
and  form,  structure  and  constitution,  activity,  sensi- 
bility, and  intelligence,  and  all  their  perceptual 
knowledge  must  have  been  correspondently  changed. 
The  men  of  to-day  are  living  in  the  age  of  scientists 
who,  not  content  with  the  use  of  their  natural  organs 
of  perception,  are  supplementing  them  with  all  the 
instruments  and  artificial  contrivances  which  their 
ingenuity  can  devise,  but  not  even  to  the  greatest 
physicists  having  at  command  the  most  modern  in- 
ventions does  the  world  of  the  senses  show  itself  ex- 
actly and  exclusively  as  it  is.  The  perceptual  world 
as  accepted  even  by  the  most  advanced  physical  sci- 
ence is  still  not  pure  and  naked  reality,  but  to  no 
inconsiderable  extent  made  up  of  illusion  and  specu- 
lation.   In  fact  it  is  largely  of  the  nature  of  Maya. 

Further,  however  much  we  may  admire  modern 
physical  science  on  account  of  its  precision  and  use- 
fulness, no  thoughtful  man  can  fail  to  be  as  much 
impressed  with  a  sense  of  its  shallowness  as  of  its 
depth.      It  is  soon  at  the  end  of  its  tether,  and  con- 

412 


IMPERFECTIONS   OF  PHYSICAL   SCIENCE 

stantly  reminding  ns  of  tlie  extent  of  human  igno- 
rance even  of  matter,  A  few  short  stages  take  our 
greatest  physicists  to  those  elements  of  matter  which 
are  the  farthest  limits  both  of  sense-perception  and 
of  physical  analysis.  Then  they  have  to  ask,  What 
is  matter  ?  What  is  its  really  ultimate  constitution  ? 
What  comes  after  and  accounts  for  the  elements  into 
which  they  have  resolved  it  ?  But  those  questions  at 
once  take  them  beyond  the  material  world, — outside 
any  perceptual  world, — and  leave  them  where  none 
of  man's  senses,  even  if  aided  by  the  most  powerful 
instruments  of  research,  has  any  information  to  give. 
The  physicist  in  pursuit  of  the  knowledge  of  matter 
comes  speedily  to  where  matter  itself  requires  to  be 
accounted  for,  and,  as  it  does  nofe  account  for  itself, 
it  has  to  be  accounted  for  by  what  is  different  from 
itself,  not  material.  He  is  thus  forced  to  pass  from 
the  perceptual  world  to  a  conceptual  or  conjectural 
world  to  explain  it,  and  of  such  worlds  there  are 
many  competing  for  his  attention.  Matter  and  the 
material  world  have  been  accounted  for  by  "  atoms  " 
(an  hypothesis  of  which  there  are  divers  ancient  and 
modern  forms),  "  ether,"  "  metaphysical  points  capa- 
ble of  eifort,"  "  indivisible  unextended  points  sur- 
rounded by  spheres  of  attractive  and  repulsive 
force,"  "  unextended  spiritual  forces  or  monads," 
"  permanent  possibilities  of  sensation,"  "  groups  or 
clusters  of  actual  or  expected  sensations  or  ideas," 
"non -matter  in  motion,"  "objectified  Divine 
thoughts,"  "  manifestations  or  outgoings  of  the 
Divine  Will,"  &c.,  &c.  But  can  any  one  of  those 
hypotheses  be  accepted  as  satisfactory?    Has  any  one 

413 


PAETIAL    OK    LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

of  them  been  either  conclusively  proved  or  dis- 
proved? Will  any  man  who  impartially  examines 
them  feel  confident  that  he  knows  thoroughly  what 
matter  is?    I  think  not. 

It  does  not  follow  from  what  I  have  just  been 
stating  that  any  agnostic  view  either  of  the  world  or 
of  physical  science  is  a  justifiable  one,  but  it  indicates 
that  we  must  be  content  with  such  knowledge  or 
science  of  the  material  world  as  alone  seems  attain- 
able, and  is  at  least  all  that  we  find  ourselves  to 
have  really  attained.  There  is  a  practically  univer- 
sal belief  among  men  that  there  is  an  external  world, 
as  also  that  there  are  ample  reasons  for  the  belief, — 
for  thinking  that  they  know  that  there  is  an  external 
world  and  know  a  good  deal  about  it.  For  that  belief 
there  is  ample  justification,  but  only  the  same  sort 
of  justification  as  may  be  had  for  belief  in  God. 

We  believe  that  the  contents  of  the  world — the 
bodies  of  men  (our  own  included),  houses,  trees, 
fields,  &c. — although  the  ultimate  grounds  of  them 
may  be  spiritual,  are  real  external  and  material 
things.  What  reasons  have  we  for  so  thinking? 
Such  reasons  as  the  following, — reasons  which  I 
must  merely  enumerate.  1°.  Although  our  sensa- 
tions and  even  perceptions  are  merely  as  psychical 
states  wholly  subjective — i.e.,  internal  not  external 
phenomena — even  physicists  and  psychologists  find 
themselves  compelled  to  connect  those  subjective 
states  with  objective  causes  and  external  conditions. 
The  connections  established  between  sensations  of 
smell  and  motions  in  odorous  objects,  between  sensa- 
tions of  hearing  and  vibrations  of  the  minute  parti- 

414 


KNOWLEDGE    OF    MATERIAL    WORLD 

cles  of  the  air,  between  such  sentient  impressions 
as  those  associated  with  the  terms  hardness,  rough- 
ness, or  elasticity  and  the  arrangement  of  material 
particles  or  action  of  molecular  forces,  and  between 
sensations  of  colour  and  the  action  of  luminiferous 
rays  on  the  fibres  of  the  eye;  and,  in  a  word,  all 
references  of  our  sensations  to  physical  causes,  so 
far  as  they  have  been  adequately  justified,  are  due 
to  an  inductive  process  essentially  identical  with  all 
sound  scientific  inductions.  To  deny  their  validity 
implies  the  non-validity  of  all  inductive  science. 
2°.  Man  is  in  a  large  part  matter.  He  has  a  body, 
and  his  body  and  mind  are  intimately  connected,  and 
influence  each  other  to  a  great  extent.  Having  a 
material  body  of  his  own  he  readily  comes  to  know 
what  matter  and  bodies  are.  He  is  conscious  of  his 
sensations  of  sound,  colour,  smell,  touch,  and  sight 
as  different  not  only  in  intensity  and  kind  but  also  as 
different  in  place  and  time.  Those  sensations,  al- 
though dependent  on  the  brain,  are  not  felt  to  be 
in  the  brain  but  in  different  parts  of  the  body,  and 
that  either  simultaneously  or  in  succession.  Hence 
knowledge  of  the  difference  between  mind  and 
matter,  self  and  the  world,  is  soon  attained ;  and  that 
all  the  more  so  because  sensation  itself  is  never  alone 
but  always  conjoined  with  perception  proper,  is  an 
act  of  knowledge  of  a  non-ego  which  is  either  the 
body  or  material  objects  beyond  the  body.  Percep- 
tion attends  all  the  senses,  and  not,  as  Herbart  and 
Beneke  supposed,  merely  touch  and  sight.  3°.  Ex- 
perience of  the  resistance  of  material  objects  to 
man's  volitions  and  exertions  has  often  been  made 

415 


PARTIAL    OE   LIMITED    AGNOSTICISM 

the  basis  of  an  argument  for  belief  in  an  external 
world,  and  the  argument  when  properly  stated  may 
well  be  deemed  valid.  4°.  A  kindred  argument  may 
be  rested  on  the  persistence  and  permanence  of  mate- 
rial objects,  and  may  be  easily  so  presented  that  no 
sane  person  will  seriously  attempt  a  refutation  of  it. 
5°.  Material  objects  give  evidence  of  their  reality  as 
such  in  that  they  affect  in  the  same  way  not  merely 
some  but  all  individuals,  and  that  not  only  at  rare  or 
exceptional  times,  but  whenever  any  one  chooses  to 
observe  them.  What  is  perceived  by  many  or  all  as 
an  external  object  cannot  be  reasonably  regarded  ag 
a  merely  subjective  state.  That  argument  has  been 
well  presented  in  P.  E.  Dove's  Lopic  of  the  Christian 
Faith.  6°.  Closely  connected  with  it,  and  seemingly 
as  relevant  and  valid,  is  the  argument  which  various 
scientists  have  rested  on  the  law  of  conservation  of 
matter  and  energy. 

I  have  merely  referred  to  the  foregoing  arguments 
because  I  have  not  attempted  in  this  work, — not 
even  in  this  chapter  of  it, — to  treat  of  agnosticism 
as  to  the  world  in  itself,  but  merely  of  agnosticism 
as  to  the  world  in  relation  to  agnosticism  as  to  God. 
The  manifestations  of  the  world  itself  to  those  who 
take  the  right  way  of  apprehending  them  are  the 
trujB  bases  of  belief  in  and  knowledge  of  it,  and  not 
otherwise  is  it  as  regards  God.  Both  the  world  and 
God  are  known  in  much  the  same  way.  It  is  not  by 
long-drawn-out  formal  proofs  or  demonstrations  akin 
to  those  of  geometry,  but  in  both  cases  by  an  essen- 
tially practical  and  humble  as  well  as  reasonable  way. 
If  we  candidly  and  earnestly  seek  to  know  God  and 

416 


WOELD  AND   GOD   KNOWN  IN   SAME   WAY 

nature,  if  we  love,  study,  and  co-operate  with  them, 
we  shall  assuredly  grow  continuously  in  the  knowl- 
edge of  them/ 

'  See  Dr.  K.  T.  Smith's  admirable  work  Man's  Knowledge  of  Man 
and  of  God^  six  discourses  delivered  before  the  University  of  Dublin 
at  the  Donellan  Lecture,  1884-85. 


417 


CHAPTER   VIII 
AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO   GOD 

I.    INTEODUCTOEY   EEMAEKS    ON    AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO 
GOD 

It  is  now  necessary  to  treat  exclusively  of  the  agnos- 
ticism which  has  a  direct  and  special  reference  to  the 
third  great  ultimate  object  of  human  thought, — the 
highest,  the  most  comprehensive,  and  the  most  awe- 
inspiring  object  of  thought  which  finite  minds  can 
entertain, — namely,  God.  To  God  all  agnosticism 
as  to  religion,  all  agnosticism  either  of  a  religious 
or  anti-religious  kind,  has  a  direct  and  special  refer- 
ence, and  that  necessarily,  seeing  that  religion  itself 
is  essentially  relationship,  a  felt  and  consciously  real- 
ised relationship,  of  the  human  spirit  to  what  it 
recognises  as  the  Divine  Being  on  which  it  is  de- 
pendent. Whenever  the  human  spirit  rises  into  the 
sphere  of  true  religious  experience,  and  feels  what 
life  eternal  means,  it  cannot  fail  to  regard  what  seems 
to  it  the  Divine  as  more  truly,  and  in  a  stricter  sense, 
an  ultimate  of  thought  than  self  or  the  world.  The 
idea  of  it  is  more  comprehensive  and  exhaustive  both 
of  knowledge  and  existence  than  either  self  or  the 
world.  Not  self  or  the  world  but  God  only  can  be 
the  idea  idearum  and  ens  entium.  All  selves  except 
God's  own  self  arc  dependent  and  originated  selves, 
which  owe  what  they  arc  to  Him  in  whom  they  live 

418 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  KELIGION 

and  move  and  have  their  being.  All  worlds  are  parts 
of  the  universe  which  has  its  unity  in  God,  which  has 
com6  from  God,  which  is  dependent  on  Him,  and  is 
what  He  has  made  and  willed  it  to  be.  Its  being 
is  owing  to  His  self -existence,  its  powers  are  also  His 
powers,  its  constitution  is  His  work,  its  laws  and  its 
ends  are  those  which  He  has  assigned  to  it,  by  which 
He  rules  it,  and  to  which  He  guides  it. 

God  is  not  only  a  higher  and  more  comprehensive 
object  of  thought  than  human  selves  or  material 
worlds,  but  also,  as  I  have  already  had  to  indicate, 
one  which  is  in  a  certain  sense  more  definite  and  less 
ambiguous.  Although  the  depths  and  mysteries  in 
the  Divine  nature  must  far  exceed  and  transcend  the 
depths  and  mysteries  in  human  nature  and  the 
material  universe,  the  idea  of  God  is  clearer,  more 
precise,  and  more  exactly  definable.  No  atheist  or 
agnostic  can  reasonably  pretend  to  be  ignorant  of 
what  is  meant  by  the  term  God  as  employed  by  an 
intelligent  theist.  The  atheist  denies  that  there  is  a 
God,  but  he  cannot  honestly  disallow  that  he  under- 
stands what  is  meant  by  the  word.  The  agnostic 
denies  that  God  is  knowable,  but  not  that  the  idea  of 
God  is  either  knowable  or  known.  Were  it  either 
unknown  or  unknowable  to  him,  his  own  agnostic 
reasoning  must  necessarily  be  absurd.  Reasoning  to 
the  unknown  or  unknowable  may  well  be  regarded 
as  a  questionable  process;  reasoning  from  them  is 
manifestly  ridiculous  folly. 

The  idea  of  God  so  underlies  and  conditions 
human  experience  and  human  thought  that  man  may 
not  unreasonably  be  held  to  be  by  nature  in  some 

419 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

measure  a  religious  being.  In  all  stages  of  his  exist- 
ence lie  appears  to  have  had  some  anticipations  and 
conceptions  of  God.  Doubtless  at  first  such  antici- 
pations and  conceptions,  if  existent  at  all,  which  I  do 
not  dogmatically  affirm,  were  very  vague  and  crude, 
but  so  also  were  primitive  notions  of  the  world  and 
souls.  The  measure  of  man's  knowledge  of  God 
necessarily  corresponds  to  the  measure  of  his  general 
enlightenment,  as  the  measure  of  the  latter  no  less 
necessarily  does  to  the  measure  of  the  former.  The 
worth  of  his  thoughts  of  God,  like  his  thoughts  of 
man  and  nature,  must  on  the  whole  be  worth  just 
what  he  himself  is.  The  development  of  the  idea  of 
God  and  the  course  of  the  history  of  man  are  so 
dependent  on  each  other  that  without  a  full  recogni- 
tion of  the  importance  of  either  the  other  must  be 
unintelligible.  The  meaning  of  history  can  become 
apparent  only  in  so  far  as  God's  self-manifestation  of 
Himself  becomes  visible  in  humanity,  and  it  is  be- 
coming so  realised  now  as  it  has  never  hitherto  been. 
All  the  chief  peoples  of  the  world  have  now  come, 
or  are  rapidly  coming,  to  accept  essentially  the  same 
idea  of  God.  Christian  missions  have  had  directly 
and  indirectly  amazing  success.  Atheism  has  largely 
lost  ground  during  the  past  century,  and  such  suc- 
cesses as  it  has  had  have  been  due  not  to  the  influence 
of  new  reasons  or  of  scientific  discoveries,  as  some 
persons  would  pretend,  but  to  political  discontent 
and  remediable  social  evils.  Polytheism  is  rapidly 
disappearing.  The  various  forms  of  monotheism  are 
drawing  closer  to  one  another  and  centring  in  Chris- 
tianity.   One  may  almost  say  that  in  recent  "  world 

420 


REFERS  TO  ITS  OBJECT 

parliaments  of  religion  "  one  and  the  same  God  was 
alone  acknowledged  and  adored. 

There  is  much  more  accordance  of  opinion  as  to 
what  should  be  meant  by  "  God  "  than  as  to  what 
should  be  meant  by  "  the  world  "  or  "  the  ego."  It 
would  be  easy  to  fill  a  page  with  definitions  of 
"  God  "  which,  although  they  might  not  be  regarded 
perhaps  as  altogether  faultless,  would  not  be  objected 
to  as  ambiguous.  Two  very  common  definitions  of 
Deity  are  these :  "  God  is  the  self-existent,  infinite, 
and  eternal  Being,  the  Creator,  Preserver,  and  Ruler 
of  all,"  and  "  God  is  a  Spirit,  infinite,  eternal,  and 
unchangeable  in  His  being,  wisdom,  power,  holiness, 
justice,  goodness,  and  truth."  Millions  of  intelligent 
persons  will,  without  hesitation,  accept  either  or  both 
of  them  as  a  correct  statement  of  what  they  believe 
God  to  be.  Is  there  any  definition  of  the  "  world  "  or 
"  self  "  of  which  the  same  can  be  said  ?  Is  there  in- 
deed any  definition  whatever  of  "  matter  "  which  any 
considerable  number  of  physicists,  metaphysicists,  or 
fairly  well-educated  men  would  agree  to  accept  ?  I  do 
not  believe  there  is.  There  are  about  forty  definitions 
of  matter,  each  held  by  small  groups  only  of  physi- 
cists or  metaphysicists,  but  not  one  which  has  found, 
or  seemingly  deserves  to  have  found,  general  accept- 
ance. 

Agnosticism  as  to  religion  is  essentially  agnosti- 
cism as  to  God,  the  object  of  religion.  There  can  he 
no  religion  where  there  is  no  faith  in  the  Divine. 
The  distinctive  idea  of  religion  is  the  Divine.  Ap- 
prehension of  the  Divine  is  what  is  constitutive  of  all 
spiritual  knowledge,  just  as  apprehension  of  self  is 

421 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

of  all  introspective  and  psychological  knowledge,  and 
as  apprehension  of  the  world  is  of  all  physical  ob- 
servation and  science.  The  reasons  given  for  disbelief 
in  the  Divine,  when  fairly  and  seriously  examined, 
will  rarely  be  found  to  be  stronger  than  those  which 
have  been  unsuccessfully  urged  in  support  of  scepti- 
cism as  to  the  world  and  selves.  They  are  very  apt, 
however,  to  seem  stronger,  as  the  knowledge  of  God, 
the  highest  and  most  precious  of  all  knowledge,  is 
the  least  likely  of  all  and  in  reality  the  least  of  all, 
as  I  hope  to  show  in  this  chapter,  to  be  appreciated 
aright  and  sought  for  with  all  due  earnestness  and 
honesty. 

Agnosticism  regarded  from  a  religious  point  of 
view  may  be  religious,  anti-religious,  or  simply  non- 
religious.  The  agnosticism  which  is  neither  distinc- 
tively religious  nor  anti-religious  but  simply  non- 
religious  is  the  agnosticism  which  has  no  special 
reference  to  one  more  than  to  another  of  the  ultimate 
objects  of  knowledge.  In  other  words,  it  is  the  abso- 
lute or  universal  agnosticism  with  which  I  have  al- 
ready dealt,  and  which  I  do  not  require  to  take  further 
into  account.  In  a  sense  it  is  the  only  self-consistent 
agnosticism.  Yet  it  is  the  least  prevalent.  And  no 
wonder,  for  what  it  attempts  to  effect  is  to  show  that 
all  supposed  knowledge  is  really  ignorance.  But  that 
would  be  equivalent  to  complete  mental  suicide,  and 
humanity  cannot  be  expected  to  commit  felo  da  se. 
When  such  agnosticism  is  professed  it  generally  seeks 
to  conceal  its  real  significance  by  a  x)eculiar  and  im- 
proper use  of  the  term  knowledge.  It  proceeds  on  an 
ideally  absolute  view  of  knowledge,  one  which  tran- 

422 


TWO    FOEMS    OF   AGNOSTICISM 

scends  all  ordinary  human  knowledge,  and  denies  to 
be  knowledge  all  conception  and  thought  which  have 
not  a  comprehensiveness,  exactness,  and  certitude  in- 
capable of  being  questioned  or  criticised.  The  agnos- 
tic standard  of  knowledge  to  which  I  refer  is,  in  fact, 
the  docta  ignorantia  which  refuses  to  accept  as  knowl- 
edge anything  presenting  itself  as  such  to  which  any 
objection  can  be  taken  or  in  which  any  imperfection 
can  be  found.  Such  a  view  obviously  assumes  that 
man  is  by  the  very  laws  and  limits  of  his  nature  not 
merely  the  dependent  and  fallible  being  which  he  cer- 
tainly is,  but  altogether  incapable  of  ascertaining 
truth  and  acquiring  knowledge,  which  he  certainly  is 
not. 

The  two  forms  of  agnosticism  which  directly  refer 
to  God  and  religion  are  the  theistic  and  anti-theistic, 
the  religious  and  anti-religious.  Both  forms  are 
not  uncommon. 

The  latter  is  widely  prevalent.  The  religious  ag- 
nostic denies  that  we  can  know  God,  yet  holds  that 
without  knowledge  of  Him  we  may  legitimately  be- 
lieve in  Him.  What  is  distinctive  of  his  agnosticism 
is  its  strange  combination  of  professed  ignorance  of 
God  with  asserted  faith  in  God;  its  deliberate  con- 
junction of  such  apparently  incompatible  states  of 
mind  as  scepticism  with  regard  to  religious  knowledge 
and  fideism  with  regard  to  religious  belief.  With 
reason  it  deals  in  a  suspicious,  critical,  and  negative 
way.  With  faith  it  deals  in  a  credulous,  dogmatic, 
and  affirmative  way.  As  regards  both  reason  and 
faith  it  is  always  in  excess,  and  in  conjoining  them, 
instead  of  harmonising  them,  it  sets  self-consistency 

423 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

at  defiance.  There  are,  as  we  shall  see  at  a  later 
stage,  as  many  forms  of  such  agnosticism  as  there 
are  kinds  of  substitutes  for  religious  knowledge  put 
forward  as  legitimate  bases  of  belief.  It  may  suffice, 
however,  to  keep  in  view  at  present  that  it  is  inher- 
ently self-contradictory,  inasmuch  as  it  denies  that  we 
can  know  what  God  is  yet  affirms  that  God  is,  although 
entire  ignorance  of  what  anything  is  clearly  and 
necessarily  implies  entire  ignorance  even  that  it  is. 
We  know  that  anything  is  only  by  having  some 
knowledge  of  what  it  is.  To  know  bare  existence, 
pure  being,  is  impossible  and  inconceivable.  Such 
existence  or  being  is  a  mere  idol  of  extravagant  spec- 
ulation or  unintelligible  mysticism.  Hence  those 
who  deny  to  man  all  knowledge  of  God  in  the  ordinary 
sense  of  the  term  knowledge  naturally  substitute  for 
it  mystic  means  or  acts, — ecstasy,  absorption,  direct 
vision,  &c.  Hence  there  is  often  much  illusion  and 
scepticism  in  mysticism  and  pantheism.  Hence  also 
there  are  forms  of  both  hardly  distinguishable  from 
atheism. 

The  anti-religious  agnostic  maintains  that  we  are 
both  unable  to  know  God  and  unentitled  to  believe 
in  God.  His  attack  on  religion  is  consequently  a 
more  comprehensive  one  than  that  of  the  religious 
agnostic.  It  is  an  attack  both  on  the  knowledge  and 
belief  implied  in  whatever  is  worthy  of  the  name  of 
religion, — in  all  that  can  claim  to  be  the  soul's  expe- 
rience of  intercourse  with  God.  It  has  also  a  self- 
consistency  which  the  assault  of  the  religious  agnos- 
tic does  not  jwssess.  The  alliance  of  agnosticism  with 
fideism  may  have  sentimental  and  practical  advan- 

434 


EELIGIOUS  AND  ANTI-RELIGIOUS 

tages  for  the  former,  but  it  must  in  all  cases  bring 
with,  it  great  logical  disadvantages.  In  all  forms  it 
is  an  unnatural  alliance.  Each  species  of  fideism  is 
an  inconsistent  kind  of  agnosticism.  The  substitutes 
for  knowledge  which  fideism  proposes  are  so  many 
unsatisfactory  bases  of  belief. 

Both  religious  and  anti-religious  agnostics  deny 
that  man  can  attain  to  any  real  knowledge  of  God. 
In  that  they  are  agreed.  And  on  account  of  their 
being  so  far  agreed  they  may  alike  be  regarded  by 
self-consistent  theists  as  holders  of  a  positivist,  em- 
l^iricist,  or  naturalist  creed.  They  are  agreed  in  con- 
fining the  whole  sphere  of  possible  knowledge  to  the 
examination,  discrimination,  classification,  correla- 
tion, &c.,  of  phenomena,  physical  or  psychical.  As 
regards  knowledge  of  God,  religious  and  anti-relig- 
ious agnostics  take  up  the  same  attitude.  Both  en- 
deavour to  persuade  men  that  there  is  and  can  be  no 
such  knowledge,  and  that  they  ought  to  be  content 
with  unquestioning,  unreasoned,  and,  what  must  seem 
to  others  at  least,  unenlightened  belief.  The  religious 
agnostic's  denial  of  knowledge  of  God  is,  however, 
much  more  dangerous  and  harmful  than  the  anti-re- 
ligious agnostic's  denial.  The  latter  is  generally  to  a 
considerable  extent  discounted,  while  the  former  is 
apt  to  be  much  overestimated.  The  assaults  of  Sir 
William  Hamilton  and  Dean  Mansel  on  the  evi- 
dences or  rational  bases  of  theistic  belief  made  a  vast- 
ly greater  impression  on  the  public  mind  than  those 
of  J.  S.  Mill,  W.  K.  Clifford,  and  G.  J.  Eomanes. 
That  they  had  more  relevancy  or  validity  may  well  be 
questioned. 

435 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

Anti-religious  agnosticism  enters  as  an  element 
into  all  anti-theistic  theories.  It  is  to  be  found  in 
atheism,  positivism,  secularism,  materialism,  pes- 
simism, &c.  In  those  connections,  however,  I  have 
already  dealt  with  it  somewhat  fully  in  Anti-Theistic 
Theories.  Here  therefore  I  need  only  remind  my 
readers  that  the  reasons  which  anti-religious  agnostics 
urge  against  belief  in  God  are  often  those  with  which 
they  have  been  supplied  by  religious  agnostics.  Anti- 
religious  agnostics  readily  accept  as  reasons  for  dis- 
belief in  God  reasons  which  religious  agnostics  urge 
against  the  claim  to  knowledge  of  God,  yet  maintain 
to  be  insufficient  to  warrant  disbelief  in  God ;  that  is 
to  say,  anti-religious  agnostics,  although  holding  a 
more  consistent  and  so  far  stronger  logical  position 
than  religious  agnostics,  often  strangely  attribute 
more  weight  to  the  arguments  of  those  whom  they 
deem  credulous  religionists  than  the  latter  themselves 
do.  The  same  arguments  which  left  Hamilton  and 
Mansel  sincere  religious  believers  were  largely  re- 
ceived as  necessarily  and  equally  discrediting  relig- 
ious belief  and  religious  knowledge.  The  most  in- 
genious and  subtle  arguments  which  have  been  urged 
against  theism  as  a  doctrine  which  can  be  regarded  as 
a  real  and  trustworthy  expression  of  knowledge  of 
God  have  been  oftener  devised  by  theists  than  by  anti- 
theists.  Theists  have  been  frequently  the  keenest, 
and,  I  venture  to  add,  frequently  the  most  cavilling 
and  sophistical,  critics  of  theism.  Hence  there  is  no 
necessity  here  for  a  separate  examination  of  the  spe- 
cial reasons  of  anti-religious  agnostics.  There  is  a 
singular  lack  of  such  reasons.     I  will,  therefore,  con- 

426 


ANTI-EELIGIOUS  AGNOSTICISM 

fine  myself  in  this  chapter  to  a  consideration  of  the 
prevalence  of  anti-religious  agnosticism  and  an  indi- 
cation of  some  of  its  causes, 

II.    PREVALENCE    OF    ANTI-RELIGIOUS    AGNOSTICISM 

Anti-religious  agnosticism  is  of  all  varieties  of  .con- 
temporary agnosticism  the  most  prevalent,  and  also 
the  most  sincere  and  earnest.  The  agnostic  move- 
ment in  antiquity  must  have  helped  to  undermine 
the  classical  theology  or  mythology,  but  at  no  stage 
of  its  course  was  it  primarily  or  predominantly  di- 
rected against  it,  but  against  knowledge  as  such,  sci- 
ence in  general,  the  claim  to  a  rational  certitude  or 
well-grounded  knowledge  in  any  sphere.  The  Greek 
philosophical  sceptics  were  not  more  hostile  than  oth- 
er Greek  philosophers  to  the  religion  of  Greece,  and 
would  have  deemed  it  a  waste  of  their  ingenuity  and 
beneath  their  dignity  as  philosophers  to  direct  their 
attacks  chiefly  against  the  religious  beliefs  of  their 
countrymen.  The  popular  Greek  myths  regarding 
the  gods  were  too  absurd  to  be  argued  against  on  ag- 
nostic principles;  they  could  only  be  referred  to  in 
proof  of  the  extraordinary  credulity  of  mankind. 
The  Greek  philosophical  sceptics,  therefore,  no  more 
thought  of  spending  their  strength  in  assailing  Greek 
mythology,  than  the  so-called  scientific  agnostics  of 
our  own  day  deem  it  worth  their  trouble  to  attack 
the  legends  of  the  saints.  The  purer  and  higher  ele- 
ments in  Greek  religion  they  viewed  not  unsympa- 
thetically,  having  regard  to  their  moral  tendency  and 
practical  utility.  In  a  word,  the  philosophical  scep- 
tics of  the  ancient  classical  world  must  be  regarded 

427 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

not  as  anti-religious  bnt  as  religious  agnostics.  They 
were  "  agnostics  "  inasmuch  as  they  challenged  the 
validity  and  certainty  of  what  claimed  to  he  religious 
knowledge  as  well  as  of  all  other  forms  and  kinds  of 
what  is  commonly  called  knowledge ;  hut  "  religious  " 
inasmuch  as  they  did  not  infer  that  religion  ought  to 
be  discarded  or  neglected. 

The  agnostic  movement,  after  a  long  arrest,  again 
made  itself  felt  in  Europe  during  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries.  In  ch.  iii.  I  have  dwelt  on 
that  stage  of  it  at  as  much  length  as  my  space  per- 
mitted, mainly  in  order  to  help  my  readers  to  realise 
that  the  scepticism  of  that  remarkable  period  was, 
on  the  whole,  a  movement  in  defence  of  religion ; 
that,  speaking  generally,  its  representatives  were 
much  less  sceptical  as  to  faith  than  as  to  reason,  as  to 
religion  than  as  to  science.  The  majority  of  them 
assailed  reason  in  order  to  vindicate  faith,  and  sought 
to  exalt  the  authority  of  religion  by  pouring  contempt 
on  science.  In  other  words,  they  inculcated  what 
they  regarded  as  scientific  or  philosophical  scepti- 
cism in  the  interests  of  religious  authority  and  relig- 
ious dogma. 

In  the  course  of  time,  however,  a  great  change  has 
come  over  the  sceptical  spirit.  The  agnosticism  of 
the  present  day  is  seldom  directed  against  the  per- 
suasion of  knowledge  or  the  truth  of  science  in  gen- 
eral as  was  that  of  the  Greeks.  It  is  also  rarely  held 
to  be  valid  with  regard  to  reason  and  science  but  not 
to  faith  and  religion,  as  that  of  the  sceptics  of  the  six- 
teenth and  seventeenth  century  commonly  was.  On 
the  contrary,  it  is  only  in  reference  to  the  spiritual 

428 


AN  UNJUSTIFIED  CHANGE 

and  supernatural  that  agnosticism  is  now  widely  prev- 
alent. In  marked  contrast  to  the  agnosticism  of  for- 
mer ages  contemporary  agnosticism  is  mainly  occupied 
in  endeavouring  to  show  that  ordinary  experience  and 
the  positive  sciences  are  to  be  received  with  deference 
and  confidence,  but  that  religion  and  revelation  must 
be  rejected  as  presenting  only  credentials  which  the 
human  mind  is  incapable  of  testing  and  verifying. 
Although  it  is  only  in  comparatively  recent  times  that 
agnosticism  has  thus  taken  to  singling  out  religion 
as  the  special  object  of  its  assault,  the  change  of  atti- 
tude has  already  become  general. 

The  change  indicated  is  all  the  more  noteworthy 
because  it  is  one  far  from  obviously  consistent  or 
warranted ;  far  from  due  to  all  other  forms  of  agnos- 
ticism than  the  anti-religious  having  been  complete- 
ly refuted,  or  to  the  latter  having  been  conspicuously 
confirmed. 

Modern  research  has  done  extremely  little  to  re- 
fute or  even  to  weaken  the  sceptical  contention  for 
distrusting  the  testimony  of  the  senses  and  suspend- 
ing belief  in  the  reality  of  the  objects  of  perception 
and  the  existence  of  an  external  world.  For  although 
physics  has  brought  many  facts  to  light  regarding  the 
properties  of  matter,  and  physiology  regarding  the 
constitution  of  the  organs  of  sense  and  the  organic 
conditions  of  sensation,  and  psychology  regarding  the 
species,  modifications,  and  relations  of  the  sensations 
themselves,  which  were  unknown  to  the  phil  isophical 
sceptics  of  the  Greco-Roman  world,  it  cannot  fairly  be 
said  that  the  facts  referred  to  conclusively  dispose  of 
the  sceptical  objections  to  the  veracity  of  the  affirma- 

429 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

tions  of  sense,  and  may  even  be  plausibly  argued  to 
be  on  the  whole  confirmatory  of  them.  Physical  sci- 
ence, numerous  and  wonderful  although  its  discover- 
ies have  been,  instead  of  having  attained  to  a  single 
certain  and  adequate  conception  of  the  nature  of  mat- 
ter, has  only  suggested  a  multitude  of  dubious  and 
conflicting  hypotheses  concerning  it.  The  number  of 
divergent  and  contradictory  views  as  to  what  matter 
is,  propounded  in  the  present  century,  far  exceeds  the 
number  entertained  in  the  age  of  Pyrrho  or  Aenesi- 
demus.  Hence  denial  of  its  reality  and  affirmation 
of  its  illusoriness  can  certainly  not  be  held  to  have 
been  made  less  rational  by  the  progress  of  physical 
science  accomplished  in  the  interval.  The  mystery  of 
the  connection  between  the  physical  impressions  or 
changes  on  and  in  the  organs  of  sense  and  the  psychi- 
cal states,  affective  and  perceptive,  constitutive  of  the 
sensations  themselves,  remains  as  dark  and  profound 
as  when  its  existence  was  first  recognised.  The  same 
may  be  said  of  the  mystery  of  the  connection  between 
our  perceptions  and  their  objects.  Physiology  and 
psychology  have  both  accumulated  masses  of  facts 
which  prove  the  subjectivity  and  relativity  of  our  sen- 
sations, the  two  chief  pillars  of  scepticism  with  refer- 
ence to  the  things  of  sense.  The  difficulties  raised  by 
metaphysics  as  to  our  knowledge  of  the  external  world 
relate  to  the  foundations  or  presuppositions  of  such 
knowledge,  and  consequently  cannot  be  directly 
cleared  away  by  the  growth  of  sensible  experience 
or  by  the  findings  of  sciences  derived  from  such 
experience.  In  a  word,  that  all  our  perceptions 
are  hallucinations  and  all  their  objects  illusions  is 

430 


AN  UNJUSTIFIED   CHANGE 

as  plausible  and  credible  a  doctrine  now  as  it  ever 
was. 

Yet  there  is  little  of  such  scepticism  among  us,  and 
what  little  of  it  there  is  lacks  thoroughness  and  ro- 
bustness. Even  two  such  courageous  thinkers  as  Mr. 
Balfour  and  Dr.  Gordy,  although  they  maintain  with 
the  most  commendable  frankness  and  clearness  that 
they  have  no  knowledge  of  the  external  world,  no  ra- 
tional grounds  of  belief  for  any  matters  of  fact  except 
states  of  present  consciousness,  assure  us  at  the  same 
time  that  they  fully  believe  what  they  profess  to  be 
ignorant  of  and  to  have  no  reasons  for  believing. 
But  a  scepticism  which  thus  defines  itself  to  be  "  an 
intellectual  recognition  of  the  want  of  evidence  with- 
out its  consequent  unbelief  " ;  which  thus  represents 
itself  as  powerless  on  faith  and  conduct ;  which  thus 
acknowledges  that  knowledge  and  ignorance,  ration- 
ality and  irrationality,  are  practically  indifferent  or 
alike  to  it, — surely  in  so  doing  also  confesses  itself  to 
have  little  claim  to  be  taken  seriously.  The  mind  and 
life  of  man  cannot  be  so  divided  into  two  disconnect- 
ed sections  as  such  scepticism  implies.  Had  we  been 
able  to  do  as  well  without  reason  as  with  it,  in  the  way 
it  assumes,  we  would  surely  not  have  been  plagued 
with  it.  There  is  no  fact  more  easily  and  certainly 
verifiable  than  the  dependence  of  belief  and  action  on 
knowledge  and  reason. 

The  scepticism  which  concludes  that  religious 
knowledge  is  unattainable  is  not  only  far  more  prev- 
alent than  the  scepticism  which  seeks  to  discredit  sen- 
sible knowledge,  but  also  where  present  is  much  more 
powerful.     Those  who  argue  that  they  have  no  good 

431 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

evidence  for  the  existence  of  the  world,  no  sufficient 
reason  for  belief  in  the  objects  of  sense,  never  fail  to 
contradict  themselves  by  practically  accepting  the 
testimony  of  their  senses  as  if  it  were  evidence  of 
the  strongest,  reason  of  the  best.  Those  who  con- 
clude that  they  have  no  valid  evidence,  no  sufficient 
reason  for  belief  in  the  existence  and  agency  of  God, 
are  almost  certain  to  infer  that  they  have  no  right  to 
believe  in  God. 

The  agnosticism  which  challenges  the  legitimacy 
of  the  processes  and  the  truth  of  the  results  of  the 
positive  or  empirical  sciences  is  also  at  the  present 
day  seldom  to  be  met  with.  Those  among  us  who 
claim  to  be  "  scientific  agnostics  "  mean  by  the  claim 
that  they  are  not  agnostic  so  far  as  what  they  consid- 
er science  is  concerned,  but  only  as  regards  religion 
or  metaphysics.  The  agnosticism  of  the  present  day 
rarely  ventures  to  attack  reason  within  the  limits  of 
the  sciences  of  things  seen  and  secular.  It  generally 
treats  as  unassailable  vast  provinces  of  knowledge 
which  the  agnosticism  of  the  past  keenly  and  confi- 
dently attacked.  The  Greek  sceptics  made  no  such 
exemptions :  they  assailed  all  the  special  sciences 
which  had  begun  to  be  cultivated  in  their  time, — 
geometry,  arithmetic,  music,  physics,  logic,  grammar, 
history,  ethics,  &c.  In  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth 
centuries  the  scepticism  which  attacked  positive 
science  in  the  interest  of  religious  faith  was  the  com- 
monest form  of  agnosticism.  'Now  it  is  the  rarest. 
It  is  only  in  comparatively  recent  times  that  agnosti- 
cism has  betaken  itself  to  the  flattering  of  science  and 
the  singling  out  of  religion  as  the  special  object  of  its 
hostility. 

432 


BALFOUR'S    CRITICISE! 

The  change  is  only  a  change  of  attitude,  not  a 
change  of  nature.  Agnosticism  is  still  in  reality  as 
little  the  true  friend  of  science  as  ever.  Modern  ag- 
nosticism is  as  inconsistent  with  science  in  itself  as 
was  ancient  agnosticism.  The  facts  which  it  denies 
and  the  principles  which  it  assails  are  facts  and  prin- 
ciples essential  to  the  existence  and  development  of 
science ;  and  if  the  agnosticism  of  the  present  day 
were  more  consistent  and  ingenuous  it  would  openly, 
like  the  agnosticism  of  old,  pronounce  all  science,  and 
not  merely  religious  science,  illegitimate  and  illusory. 
But,  on  the  contrary,  it  identifies  itself  with  science, 
and  endeavours  to  pass  off  its  dogmatic  assumptions 
and  illogical  negative  inferences  as,  forsooth,  "  scien- 
tific." Its  representatives,  far  from  being  too  scep- 
tical as  to  the  principles,  data,  methods,  and  conclu- 
sions of  science,  are  not  even  reasonably  cautious  and 
critical.  The  same  persons  who  will  scarcely  look  at 
the  most  conclusive  proofs  and  evidences  in  favour  of 
religion  readily  accept  as  facts  and  certainties  mere 
hypotheses  and  conjectures  if  put  forth  in  the  name 
of  science. 

Viewed  in  this  connection  Mr.  Balfour's  Defence 
of  Philosophic  Doubt  and  Foundations  of  Belief  are 
rare  and  admirable  exceptions  to  the  general  tenor  of 
agnostic  publications.  It  is  one  of  the  greatest,  prob- 
ably the  greatest,  of  their  merits  that  they  proceed 
on  a  perfectly  clear  recognition  of  the  obligation  un- 
der which  the  scientific  agnostic  lies  to  subject  the 
idea,  premisses,  logical  processes,  and  internal  or- 
ganisation of  science  itself  to  strict  scrutiny.  But  the 
ordinary  representatives  of  contemporary  agnosticism 

433 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

are  just  the  persons  who  have  least  recognised  that 
this  is  a  merit  at  all.  Mr.  Balfour's  works  have  had 
no  influence  whatever,  so  far  as  I  am  aware,  in  the 
way  of  inducing  our  so-called  scientific  agnostics  to 
be  more  consistent,  comprehensive,  and  impartial  in 
their  epistemological  criticism.  And  this  is  hardly 
to  be  wondered  at,  seeing  that  were  the  agnostics  re- 
ferred to  to  criticise  the  foundations  of  science  as  they 
criticise  those  of  religion,  Mr.  Balfour's  contention 
that  the  case  against  religious  science  is  no  stronger 
than  against  other  science  could  not  be  plausibly  re- 
jected. 

The  immunity  granted  by  the  scientific  agnostics 
to  positive  science  is  not  due  to  all  sceptical  objections 
to  science  having  been  conclusively  answered  or  being 
capable  of  being  easily  answered.  Most  of  them  have 
not  been  completely  answered,  and  are  difficult  to  an- 
swer. They  are  quite  of  the  same  nature  as  the  ob- 
jections which  the  scientific  agnostics  urge  as  deci- 
sive against  theistic  or  Christian  faith.  Only  one  of 
them,  perhaps,  has  lost  any  considerable  measure  of 
its  force  even  against  the  physical  sciences, — the  ob- 
jection drawn  from  the  discordancy  of  the  conclusions 
reached.  In  consequence  of  following  appropriate 
methods  the  physical  sciences  have  at  length  attained 
in  a  large  measure  to  results  which  receive  the  assent 
of  all  competent  judges.  But  surely  the  fact  that  for 
so  many  ages  they  failed  in  this  respect,  and  that  their 
failure  was  the  most  effective  of  the  sceptical  argu- 
ments employed  against  them,  ought  to  make  our  sci- 
entific agnostics  more  scrupulous  than  they  are  in 
using  it  against  the  disciplines  or  sciences  conversant 

434 


CAUSES    OF   ANTI-EELIGIOUS  AGNOSTICISM 

with  religion.  It  has  become  powerless  against  phys- 
ical science,  why  may  it  not  become  so  likewise 
against  religious  science  ?  Why  should  the  latter  not 
learn  to  follow  better  methods,  and  so  become  entitled 
to  the  same  sort  of  immunity  as  is  now  enjoyed  by  the 
former  ?  May  it  not  even  be  fairly  said  to  be  on  the 
way  to  attain  the  same  sort  of  general  harmony  as 
regards  results  which  is  perceptible  in  physical  sci- 
ence, and  that  this  will  be  denied  only  by  the  preju- 
diced or  ill-informed  ? 

III.     SOME     CAUSES     OF    PREVALENCE    OF   ANTI-RELIG- 
IOUS AGNOSTICISM 

Why  is  anti-religious  or  anti-theological  agnosti- 
cism so  prevalent  ? 

"No  one  reason  can  account  for  it.  Its  explanation 
must  be  sought  for  in  the  co-operant  and  concurrent 
action  of  various  causes,  as  to  the  influence  of  which 
some  remarks  may  not  be  unnecessary  or  unprofita- 
ble. 

I.  One  such  cause,  then,  although  a  partial  and 
indirect  one,  may  be  found  in  the  comparatively 
critical  temper  and  scientific  spirit  of  the  present  age. 
Let  us  not  exaggerate  its  influence.  Our  age  is  not 
nearly  so  critical  or  scientific  as  we  are  apt  to  sup- 
2X)se.  Only  a  relatively  small  number  among  us  are 
either  critical  or  scientific.  All  but  a  very  few  even 
of  educated  persons  are  content  to  accept  on  tnist 
what  a  popular  historian  of  good  repute  tells  them, 
without  any  examination  of  his  authorities.  Free- 
man and  Stubbs  were  doubtless  critical  historians,  but 
even  their  readers  are  generally  no  more  critical  stu- 

435 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

dents  of  history  than  were  the  first  generations  of 
readers  of  Livy,  Gregory  of  Tours,  or  Bede.  Scien- 
tific opinion  is  widely  diffused  through  conteni|X)rary 
society,  but  were  all  who  participated  in  it  to  he  sub- 
jected to  an  examination  on  the  elements  of  science, 
it  would  probably  be  found  that  a  very  small  propor- 
tion of  them  could  be  credited  with  scientific  knowl- 
edge. On  what  passes  current  for  literary,  political, 
social,  and  religious  criticism  it  can  hardly  be  neces- 
sary to  say  even  a  word  to  the  intelligent.  A  truly 
critical  and  scientific  spirit  is  still  confined  to  minds 
of  exceptional  quality  or  special  training.  Much  that 
is  so  ascribed  really  springs  from  faith — ^yea,  from  a 
blind,  facile,  or  perverted  faith. 

Yet  there  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt  that  the  mod- 
em spirit  is  critical  and  scientific  to  a  degree  and  an 
extent  which  the  medieval  spirit  was  not.  Some  cen- 
turies ago  there  was  evoked  by  causes  which  it  is  un- 
necessary here  to  indicate  a  doubting,  questioning, 
scrutinising  temper  of  mind,  which  soon  made  its 
presence  felt  in  various  forms.  It  broke  up  the  long 
dogmatic  slumber  of  Europe,  and  impelled  men  to 
cast  off  old  beliefs,  to  assail  established  authorities, 
and  to  follow  other  routes  and  devise  new  methods,  in 
order  to  attain  their  ends.  Down  to  this  day  it  has 
been  continually  growing  in  strength.  Its  history  is 
the  main  current  of  modern  history.  Its  course  and 
character  have  been  very  largely  directed  and  deter- 
mined by  forces  and  modes  of  thought  which  are  not 
specifically  religious,  and  which  may  readily  become 
anti-religious.  It  has  shown  itself  in  the  region  of 
intellect  chiefly  in  the  elal)oration  and  application  of 

436 


WANT    OF   EELIGIOUS    SUSCEPTIBILITY 

the  physical,  experimeutal,  jxtsitive,  inductive  sci- 
ences, and  in  the  region  of  action  by  wonderful  in- 
genuity and  energy  as  regards  things  secular.  It  is 
apt  in  the  one  sphere  to  become  empiricism  or  mate- 
rialism, and  in  the  other  to  become  worldliness ;  and 
those  who  are  carried  by  it  to  either  error  must  nat- 
urally be  disposed  to  justify  themselves  by  adopting 
agnostic  views  and  supporting  them  by  what  are  al- 
leged to  be  critical  methods.  The  only  sort  of  relig- 
ious unity  which  is  perceptible  to  the  ordinary  eye 
has  been  broken  by  it  into  fragments.  There  is  no 
one  outstanding  religious  authority,  law,  or  creed 
now  acknowledged  as  there  was  in  pre-Reformation 
days.  Religion  is  at  present  of  all  things  the  most 
subjected  to  questionings,  and  the  questions  raised 
regarding  it  are  often  of  a  kind  to  which  the  most 
relevant  and  conclusive  answers  are  just  those  which 
can  be  least  appreciated  by  irreligious  men.  Multi- 
tudes among  us  who  have  no  scientific  knowledge  of 
any  branch  of  physics  would  be  ashamed  to  acknowl- 
edge their  ignorance,  but  are  ready  to  believe  and 
proud  to  repeat  the  metaphysical  and  anti-theological 
nonsense  in  which  physicists  of  a  certain  type  too  fre- 
quently indulge.  Multitudes  destitute  of  critical  ca- 
pacity or  training  are  anxious  to  adopt  what  they 
deem  "  advanced  critical  views,"  and,  of  course,  have 
a  preference  for  the  most  advanced.  Religion  does 
not  now  engross  the  thoughts  of  mankind  generally 
as  it  did  in  some  former  generations;  theology  has 
ceased  to  be  the  favourite  and  dominant  science ;  the 
sciences  which  deal  with  things  seen  and  temporal 
are,  on  the  contrary,  those  now  held  in  highest  honour 

437 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

and  pursued  with  the  greatest  zeal.  But  obviously 
the  too  exclusive  cultivation  of  the  physical  sciences 
may  be  just  as  anti-religious  in  tendency,  and  as  fa- 
vourable to  the  spread  of  anti-theological  agnosticism, 
as  the  too  exclusive  pursuit  of  bodily  pleasure  and 
material  wealth. 

II.  There  is  another  reason  or  element  which  must 
not  be  left  out  of  our  answer  to  the  question  under 
consideration.  Religious  knowledge,  like  every  other 
kind  of  knowledge,  presupposes  special  qualifications 
in  those  who  duly  appreciate  and  successfully  acquire 
it.  There  is  no  science  which  does  not  require  special 
aptitudes  in  its  cultivators.  The  study  of  formal 
logic  does  not  demand  purity  of  heart,  but  it  demands 
a  purity  of  reason  which  is  in  many  persons  not  to  be 
found.  Mathematics  only  discloses  its  capabilities  to 
those  who  have  an  exceptional  power  of  apprehend- 
ing quantitative  relations.  Chemical  or  physiological 
investigation  requires  much  that  is  not  called  for  in 
mathematical  investigation.  Conscience  is  an  indis- 
pensable prerequisite  in  moral  science  but  not  in  biol- 
ogy.  An  individual  devoid  of  susceptibility  to  the 
beautiful  can  be  no  authority  on  questions  of  aesthet- 
ics. In  like  manner,  spiritual  truth  requires  for  its 
apprehension  and  study  spiritual  discernment.  There 
is  nothing  exceptional  in  its  not  being  perceived  by 
unspiritually-minded  men  even  where  the  evidences 
of  its  presence  are  abundant. 

It  may  be  of  all  truth  the  clearest  in  itself,  and  yet 
dark  and  dim  to  imperfect  and  untrained  organs  of 
vision ;  the  sort  of  truth  for  the  right  discernment  of 
which  the  natural  man  most  needs  aid  and  discipline. 

438 


OTJR   SPIRITUAL  NATURE 

It  was  just  of  spiritual  as  compared  with  material 
objects  that  Aristotle  so  wisely  and  aptly  said  that 
"  our  eyes  are  like  those  of  night-birds  for  daylight, 
better  fitted  to  observe  those  which  are  less  than 
those  which  are  most  visible  in  themselves."  ^  Al- 
though the  whole  nature  of  man  is  made  for  the  ap- 
prehension and  enjoyment  of  spiritual  truth,  it  nev- 
ertheless requires  for  the  attainment  of  a  clear  con- 
sciousness and  sure  possession  of  it  an  amount  of  care 
and  effort,  of  external  guidance  and  self-endeavour, 
greater  than  is  needed  for  the  comprehension  or  ac- 
quisition of  lower  and  lesser  things.  Our  spiritual 
nature  is  far  more  easily  atrophied  through  careless- 
ness and  disuse  than  our  corporeal,  sentient,  or  pure- 
ly intellectual  nature.  Hence  a  scientist,  merely 
through  exclusive  devotion  to  his  work  as  a  scientist, 
may  become  as  dead  to  the  evidences  and  attractions 
of  religious  truth  as  the  sensualist.  A  mere  scientist, 
even  although  a  naturally  great  and  good  man,  may 
thus  allow  the  springs  of  spiritual  knowledge  and  life 
within  him  to  dry  up.  The  life  of  Charles  Darwin, 
otherwise  so  praiseworthy,  was  in  this  respect  a  warn- 
ing. Although  that  illustrious  man  had  not  only 
wonderful  special  gifts  as  a  scientist  but  was  an  emi- 
nently sincere,  self-denying,  humble,  lovable  man,  in 
his  all-engrossing  pursuit  of  biological  knowledge  he 
lost — and  with  characteristic  candour  confessed  that 
he  had  lost — his  power  to  appreciate  art  and  litera- 
ture, and  to  feel  the  devout  emotions  with  which  the 
sublimities  of  nature  had  in  his  early  years  inspired 

'  Metaphysics^  Bk.  T.     The  Less,  ch.  i. 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

him/  His  scientific  work  has  had  a  vast  and,  I  be- 
lieve, beneficent  influence  on  religious  thought  and 
life,  but  I  am  much  mistaken  if  there  will  be  found 
in  any  of  his  writings  a  single  opinion  expressed  by 
him  on  religious  questions  which  can  fairly  be  said  to 
have  either  originality  or  much  intrinsic  value.  Most 
instructive,  however,  was  the  contrast  between  his 
own  modest  reluctance  to  put  forth  his  views  on  re- 
ligion and  the  foolish  anxiety  of  others  to  ascertain 
what  those  views  were.  No  man  placed  as  he  was 
could  have  given  less  encouragement  to  the  folly  of 
those  who  would  fain  have  raised  him  to  the  rank  of 
an  authority  in  theology. 

Many  are  alive  to  the  things  of  time  and  sense  who 
are  dead  to  things  eternal  and  spiritual.  The  things, 
however,  to  which  men  are  dead  they  are  apt  to  be- 
lieve do  not  exist  or  cannot  be  known.  And  powers 
of  apprehension  which  men  are  unconscious  of  pos- 
sessing they  readily  j^ersuade  themselves  are  not  real 
powers.     It  is  imjx)ssible  for  any  one  to  deny  that 

>  The  words  of  Darwin  referred  to  are  :  "  I  have  said  that  in  one 
respect  ray  mind  has  changed  during  the  last  twenty  or  thirty  years. 
Up  to  the  age  of  thirty,  or  beyond  it,  poetry  of  many  kinds,  such  as 
the  works  of  Milton,  Gray,  Byron,  Wordsworth,  Coleridge,  and 
Shelley,  gave  me  great  pleasure,  and,  even  as  a  schoolboy,  I  took 
immense  delight  in  Shakespeare,  especially  in  the  historical  plays 
I  have  also  said  that  formerly  pictures  gave  me  considerable  and 
music  very  great  delight.  But  now  for  many  years  I  cannot  en- 
dure to  read  a  line  of  poetry  ;  I  have  tried  lately  to  read  Shake- 
speare, and  found  it  so  intolerably  dull  that  it  nauseated  me.  I 
have  also  lost  my  taste  for  pictures  or  music.  My  mind  seems  to 
have  become  a  kind  of  machine  for  grinding  general  laws  out  of 
large  collections  of  facts,  but  why  this  should  have  caused  the 
atrophy  of  that  part  of  the  brain  alone,  on  which  the  higher  tastes 
depend,  I  cannot  conceive.  The  loss  of  tlicse  tastes  is  a  loss  of 
happiness,  and  may  possibly  be  injurious  to  the  intellect,  and  more 
probably  to  the  moral  character  bv  enfeebling  the  emotional  part 
of  our  nature."— Life,  vol.  i.  pp.  100-102;  also  ib.,  pp.  311,  312. 

440 


WA>s'T    OF   KELIGIOUS    SUSCEPTIBILITY 

there  is  mathematical  truth,  yet  Sir  William  Hamil- 
ton's famous  attack  on  mathematics  was  widely 
approved  among  those  whose  minds,  although  other- 
wise well  endowed,  were  without  mathematical  apti- 
tudes, and  consequently  predisposed  to  attribute  their 
want  of  success  in  mathematical  studies  rather  to  de- 
fects in  the  science  than  to  the  limitations  of  their 
own  understandings.  Owing  to  the  prevalent  neglect 
of  aesthetic  culture  there  are  many  agnostics  as  to 
aesthetic  realities,  but  there  are  no  true  artists  among 
them, — they  are  all  anti-aesthetic  agnostics.  In  mor- 
als, a  depraved  man  is  naturally  sceptical  as  to  good- 
ness, and  a  thoroughly  selfish  man  cannot  believe  in 
pure  disinterestedness.  It  is,  in  fact,  only  in  con- 
formity with  a  law  coextensive  with  the  nature  and 
history  of  man  that  religious  truth  should  need  for 
its  acquisition  special  affinities  and  peculiar  qualifi- 
cations. The  affections  of  a  suitably  disposed  heart 
are  as  necessary  for  the  right  apprehension  and  full 
appropriation  of  such  truth  as  the  energies  of  a  clear 
intellect.  A  personal  and  progressive  experience  in 
which  the  human  soul  meets  and  feels  itself  in  con- 
tact and  communion  with  the  Divine  Spirit  is  an  in- 
dispensable condition  of  a  real  and  satisfying  com- 
prehension of  the  highest  and  most  needed  truth. 
Hence  wherever  there  is  a  mind  in  which  the  germs 
of  natural  piety  which  it  brought,  with  it  into  the 
world  have  been  allowed  to  decay  and  die,  on  which 
religious  impressions  have  been  slight  and  evanescent, 
by  which  serious  and  searching  religious  experiences 
have  been  unfelt,  and  which  has  come  to  be  wholly 
engrossed  by  secular  studies  and  interests,  there  also 

441 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

is  a  mind  to  which  no  creed  can  be  so  congenial  as 
that  of  agnosticism,  and  of  agnosticism  in  some  athe- 
istic form.     To  such  a  mind  iS'^ature,  far  from  being 

.     .     ' '  the  thin  veil 
Which  half  reveals,  and  half  conceals  the  face 
And  lineaments  of  our  King," 

is  a  dull  dead  wall  which  hides  them  from  view ;  and 
Supernatural  Revelation  may  be  even  less  translucent 
to  it.  An  agnostic  of  this  type  should  be  conscious 
of  his  deficiency  of  sensibility;  of  his  incapacity 
to  realise  what  others  of  richer  nature  and  broader 
culture  have  assuredly  felt;  of  his  unreceptiveness 
to  experiences  which  have  produced  the  purest  and 
loveliest,  the  most  disinterested  and  devoted  of  hu- 
man lives,  and  consequently  of  a  certain  hardness, 
narrowness,  and  barrenness  of  spirit.  Very  probably 
he  will  not  be  thus  conscious,  but  he  ought,  I  think, 
to  be  so ;  and  if  he  be  so,  he  can  hardly  fail  to  be  con- 
siderably sceptical  of  his  own  scepticism.  And  well 
he  may.  His  is  an  agnosticism  which  admits  of  an 
easy,  obvious,  and  ample  explanation  from  natural 
causes,  apart  altogether  from  rational  grounds. 

I  have  not  by  these  observations  begged  the  ques- 
tion at  issue.  I  do  not  argue  that  the  agnostic  ought 
to  accept  the  religious  experiences  to  which  I  refer 
as  valid  evidences,  but  merely  that  without  expe- 
riences, without  a  certain  familiar  and  inward  reali- 
sation of  the  character,  influence,  and  effects  of  relig- 
ion, he  cannot  be  a  competent  critic  or  judge  of  its 
claims  and  credentials.  T  fully  admit  that  no  one 
should  accept  what  presents  itself  to  him  as  religion 

442 


ANTI-RELIGIOUS  FEELINGS 

without  being  satisfied  of  its  rationality  and  truth. 
What  I  maintain  is  merely  that  many  may  and  act- 
ually do  fail  to  satisfy  themselves  of  the  rationality 
and  truth  of  religion  because  of  a  poverty  and  blind- 
ness of  spirit  for  which  they  are  themselves,  in  great 
part  at  least,  responsible. 

III.  The  spread  of  anti-religious  agnosticism,  I 
must  now  indicate,  is  favoured  not  only  by  the  want 
of  special  qualifications  required  for  the  due  appre- 
ciation of  religion,  but  by  the  prevalence  of  feelings 
and  passions  directly  adverse  to  its  reception.  Both 
in  the  individual  and  in  society  there  are  an  unwill- 
ingness and  aversion,  arising  from  various  causes,  to 
accept  the  evidences  presented  by.  religion  and  to  sub- 
mit to  the  claims  which  it  makes.  True  and  pure  re- 
ligion condemns  all  that  is  false  and  impure  in  hu- 
man nature,  and  demands  sacrifices  and  exertions 
which  ordinary  human  beings  are  very  indisposed  to 
make.  It  humbles  the  pride  of  man  by  evincing  his 
helplessness  as  regards  the  attainment  of  his  highest 
end.  It  throws  on  his  sinfulness  a  searching  and  ter- 
rible light,  and  imposes  on  his  appetites  and  passions 
manifold  and  severe  restraints.  It  enjoins  a  law  of 
life  opposed  to  all  the  ideals  which  the  heart  loves  to 
body  forth  in  its  imaginations.  It  requires  a  loving 
and  unqualified  submission  in  all  things  to  the  Di- 
vine Will.  Hence  we  cannot  reasonably  fail  to  con- 
clude that  it  must  be  an  utter  delusion  to  suppose 
that  religion,  were  it  only  set  forth  to  men  in  its  in- 
trinsic simplicity,  truth,  and  beauty,  would  be  spon- 
taneously and  joyously  accepted  by  all.  There  is  that 
in  human  nature  which  makes  it  possible  for  men  to 

443 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

hate  religion  because  of,  and  in  the  measure  of,  its 
purity  and  excellence. 

Is  it  said  that  the  evil  in  man  often  favours  the 
spread  of  religion  ?  That  must  be  granted ;  but  it 
detracts  nothing  from  the  truth  or  relevancy  of  what 
is  here  contended  for.  It  is  only  true  and  pure  re- 
ligion which  what  is  false  and  foid  in  man  cannot 
promote.  A  right  use  of  reason,  the  love,  of  excel- 
lence, hatred  of  vice  and  contempt  of  meanness,  good 
and  generous  affections,  unperverted  and  healthy  de- 
sires and  appetites,  alone  favour  the  reception  and 
growth  of  religion  as  it  ought  to  be,  a  self-consistent 
and  undefiled  religion.  But  causes  of  a  contrary 
nature  have  unquestionably  had  an  enormous  influ- 
ence on  the  actual  and  common  belief  and  practice 
of  the  world,  and  go  far  to  explain  the  prevalence  of 
religious  error  and  corruption.  To  show  what  these 
causes  are  and  how  they  operate  may  often  be  very 
useful  work, — a  fair  and  effective  refutation  of  the 
opinions  and  exposure  of  the  acts  to  which  they  have 
given  rise. 

Archbishop  Whateley's  Errors  of  Romanism  traced 
to  their  Origin  in  Human  Nature  has  obtained  the 
approval  of  Protestants  of  all  shades  and  varieties; 
and  although,  of  course.  Catholics  will  not  accept  its 
conclusions,  I  imagine  that  they  will  not  challenge 
the  legitimacy  of  its  method  but  merely  the  manner 
of  its  application,  and  will  be  content  to  argue  that 
what  are  alleged  to  be  errors  had  sources  of  a  dif- 
ferent nature  than  those  to  which  AVhateley  has  re- 
ferred them, — sources  which  warrant  their  being  held 
not  to  be  errors. 

444 


EVIL  MAY  SPEEAD  RELIGION 

The  agnostic  rejectors  of  religion  have  themselves 
made  great  use  of  the  argument  that  religious  beliefs 
are  the  products  of  irrational  causes,  abnormal  affec- 
tions, diseased  tendencies.  They  are  quite  entitled 
to  do  so,  and  the  argument  is  both  valid  and  valuable 
within  certain  limits.  But  it  is  double-edged,  and 
may  be  employed  as  legitimately  and  with  as  much 
effect  against  the  agnosticism  which  rejects  religion 
as  against  any  of  the  forms  of  religion  which  agnos- 
ticism impugns.  The  non-rational  causes  favourable 
to  irreligion  and  agnosticism  are  not  less  numerous 
and  powerful  than  those  favourable  to  religion  and 
theology.  Prejudices  and  enmities  against  religion 
are  so  common  and  so  deeply  rooted  in  human  nature 
that  the  agnosticism  which  represents  it  as  vain  and 
deceptive  must  be  greatly  aided  by  them,  and  may 
in  many  cases  be  mainly  produced  by  them.  As  al- 
ready indicated,  religion,  even  if  it  were  always  true 
and  pure,  would  naturally  be  to  a  large  extent  the 
object  of  hostile  feelings.  It  gains  and  satisfies  many 
through  conforming  and  ministering  to  what  is  fool- 
ish and  depraved  in  them.  But  it  in  consequence 
thereof  also  rej^els  and  revolts  many,  who,  instead 
of  thoughtfully  distinguishing  between  the  true  and 
the  false,  the  pure  and  the  impure  in  religion,  treat 
religion  as  resix)nsible  for  all  that  assumes  its  name. 
Hence,  while  some  are  led  by  their  passions  and  prej- 
udices to  degrade  and  deprave  religion,  others  are  led 
by  observation  of  the  corruptions  so  brought  about 
to  doubt  or  disbelief  of  its  truth,  and  to  hatred  and 
contempt  of  it,  even  when  it  fully  deserves  their  faith, 
love,  and  obedience.     A  vast  amount  of  the  aversion 

445 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

to  religion  from  which  the  atheism  and  scepticism  of 
our  times  have  sprung  may  be  clearly  traced  to  the 
false  impressions  of  its  real  nature  occasioned  by  the 
corruptions  and  abuses  of  it,  the  evils  done  or  sus- 
pected to  have  been  done  in  its  name,  and  the  real  or 
imagined  faults  of  its  professors.  The  atheism  and 
scepticism  which  have  been  so  prevalent  throughout 
the  past  century  in  Britain,  France,  Germany,  and 
Italy,  have  largely  arisen  from  a  hatred  of  the  Church 
and  clergy,  founded  on  the  belief  of  their  aiming 
chiefly  at  their  own  aggrandisement  and  being  inimi- 
cal to  the  interests  of  the  poor  and  labouring  classes. 
In  such  an  association  of  ideas  and  feelings  there  may 
be  little  reality  or  logic,  but  there  is  unquestionably 
much  of  that  human  nature  which  abounds  in  the 
average  man  and  so  often  proves  stronger  than  truth 
and  reason.  The  usurpations  of  ecclesiastical  ambi- 
tion, the  rash  speculations  of  theologians,  the  errors 
and  crudities  of  preachers,  the  inconsistencies  of  re- 
ligionists, &c.,  have  probably  done  more  to  make  men 
unbelievers  than  uniinpassioned  arguments  on  behalf 
of  scepticism.  And  it  is  not  only  on  the  uneducated 
that  influences  of  the  kind  referred  to  have  told. 
Their  operation  can  be  almost  as  plainly  traced  in 
Bentham's  Analysis  of  Natural  Religion  on  the  Tem- 
poral Happiness  of  Mankind,  J.  S.  Mill's  Essay  on 
the  Utility  of  Religion,  Cotter  Morison's  Service  of 
Humanity,  and  Leslie  Stephen's  Agnostic  Apology, 
as  in  the  speeches  reported  and  articles  published  in 
the  cheap  socialist,  secularist,  and  f reethought  period- 
icals. 

IV.  Perhaps  a  still  deeper  and  more  copious  eth- 
446 


A  CAUSE  OF  ANTI-EELIGIOUS  AGNOSTICISM 

ical  source  of  anti-religious  agnosticism  than  any  of 
the  foregoing  has  now  to  be  indicated.  I  refer  to  a 
misconception  of  the  nature  of  religion,  from  which 
result  deplorable  neglect  and  violation  of  the  moral 
requirements  of  religious  investigation.  One  must 
apprehend  what  religion  really  is  before  one  can 
rightly  appreciate  it.  But  many  so  fail  in  this  re- 
spect as  to  approach  even  the  consideration  of  it  in 
an  utterly  wrong  spirit.  They  regard  the  question  as 
to  its  truth  or  falsity  as  only  one  among  the  many 
questions  with  which  they  may  deal,  and  consequent- 
ly a  question  which  may  be  postponed  to  any  season 
deemed  convenient,  and  j)rosecuted  just  so  far  and  in 
such  ways  as  is  agreeable  to  them.  Some  even  imag- 
ine that  the  proper  frame  of  spirit  in  which  to  ap- 
proach it  is  one  of  cold  unconcern,  not  disturbed  by 
any  sense  of  personal  interest  in  the  inquiry  to  be 
instituted. 

Such  a  view  is  extremely  foolish.  Religion  is  no 
mere  matter  of  theory,  and  the  consideration  of  it  is 
no  mere  matter  of  option.  It  is  a  practical  thing, 
and  one  so  eminently  and  comprehensively  practical 
that  if  true  at  all  it  must  be  of  supreme  importance. 
What  is  highest  in  man  is  not  knowledge  but  action. 
His  intelligence  is  merely  a  subordinate  and  instru- 
mental faculty.  His  chief  end  is  to  be  found  not  in 
thinking  but  in  doing.  Human  nature,  as  Butler  has 
well  shown,  is  a  constitution  framed  for  virtue  under 
the  government  of  conscience.  All  its  powers,  as 
Kant  has  so  impressively  taught,  ought  to  work  un- 
der the  primacy  of  the  moral  reason.  Duty  is  its 
highest  and  most  comprehensive  law;  the  doing  of 

447 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

duty  is  the  noblest  iinproveiiieiit  of  being.  The  first 
and  greatest,  yea,  in  a  sense  the  one,  demand  made  on 
man  is  to  do  whatever  he  recognises  to  be  duty,  and 
this  demand  is  of  the  most  imperative  kind,  for  who- 
ever refuses  to  obey  it  is  self-degraded,  and  unless 
given  over  to  a  reprobate  mind,  feels  himself  to  be  so 
before  God  and  man. 

* '  Powers  depart, 
Possessions  vanish,  and  opinions  change. 
And  passions  hold  a  fluctuating  seat ; 
But  by  tlie  storm  of  circumstance  unshaken, 
And  subject  neither  to  eclipse  nor  wane, 
Duty  exists  :  immutably  survives 
For  our  support,  the  measure  and  the  forms 
Which  an  abstract  intelligence  supplies  ; 
Whose  kingdom  is  where  time  and  space  are  not." 

And  to  Duty  all  man's  work,  whether  of  head  or 
hands,  ought  to  have  a  constant  reference.  Our  re- 
sponsibility as  men  is  coextensive  with  our  ability, 
our  free  agency,  our  power  of  willing.  We  are  as 
responsible  for  the  exercise  and  use  of  our  intellectual 
faculties  as  of  our  bodily  members,  seeing  that  the 
former  are  under  our  direction  and  control  equally 
with  the  latter.  The  law  of  duty  is  for  all,  yet  not 
the  same  for  all.  It  assigns  to  each  man  his  own 
work  and  no  other's.  It  calls  upon  some  specially  to 
occupy  themselves  with  science;  and  to  all  such  it 
prescribes  in  what  spirit  their  work  must  be  done — 
one  of  earnestness,  sincerity,  thoroughness,  entire 
truthfulness,  disinterestedness,  and  other  kindred 
qualities.  Some  it  as  distinctly  forbids  to  have  to 
do  with  science,  and  enjoins  to  work  in  other  spheres 

448 


MORALITY   AND   RELIGION 

for  which  they  are  better  fitted  and  in  which  they  can 
labour  without  neglecting  the  claims  of  common  life. 
But  it  exempts  none  from  the  obligation  to  consider 
seriously  what  the  claims  of  religion  on  them  are,  and 
how  they  stand  in  relation  to  it,  for  the  law  of  duty  is 
itself  so  identified  with  that  obligation  and  those 
claims  that  for  it  to  do  so  were  to  deny  itself.  Moral- 
ity and  religion  so  support  and  include  each  other 
that  they  are  not  separable.  The  great  question,  What 
must  I  do  ?  How  can  I  live  and  act  as  I  ought  ? — the 
question  which  of  all  others  has  the  most  direct  and 
imperative  claims  on  every  man — is  at  once  a  relig- 
ious and  a  moral  one,  so  that  none  are  morally  free  to 
neglect  consideration  of  the  question  as  to  the  truth 
and  requirements  of  religion,  or  to  consider  it  other- 
wise than  with  all  the  care  and  earnestness  appro- 
priate to  a  practical  matter  of  primary  importance. 
If  there  be  a  God  there  is  one  to  whom  we  stand  in 
•  the  most  intimate  relations,  to  whom  we  must  be  un- 
der infinite  obligations,  and  to  whose  will  our  lives 
and  actions  ought  to  be  conformed.  Hence  to  en- 
deavour to  determine  whether  God  be  or  not,  and  if 
He  be  what  He  is,  and  whether  and  how  He  has  man- 
ifested Himself,  and  how  He  is  related  to  us,  and 
what  He  requires  of  us  as  the  rational  and  moral  be- 
ings we  are,  is  a  clear  and  immediate  duty  which  no 
man  may  neglect,  or  perfunctorily  discharge,  without 
incurring  great  guilt  and  deserving  great  shame. 

But  we  may  well  question  if  there  would  be  any 
anti-theological  agnostics  were  this  duty  faithfully 
performed.  Has  any  soul  sought  early,  earnestly, 
and   in  a  reasonable  way  for  God  without  finding 

449 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

Him,  and  acquiring  some  measure  of  the  kind  of 
knowledge  which  the  anti-theological  agnostic  de- 
clares to  be  unattainable  ?  Probably  not  one.  And 
certainly  the  distinctively  sceptical  way  of  dealing 
with  the  fundamental  questions  as  to  religious 
truth  is  a  foolish  and  wrong  way.  "  Scepticism 
(j7  o-#ce\|rt5),"  says  Sextus,  "  is  a  faculty  or  method 
of  inquiry  which  compares  and  which  opposes  in  all 
possible  ways  apparent  or  sensible  things  and  those 
which  are  perceived  by  the  understanding;  one  by 
means  of  which  we  arrive,  owing  to  the  equal  weight 
of  the  things  or  reasons  opposed,  first  to  suspension  of 
judgment,  and  then  to  exemption  from  trouble,  to 
tranquillity  of  soul."  Rather,  might  he  have  said, 
a  method  of  producing  intellectual  and  moral  paraly- 
sis, and  so  deadness  of  soul.  It  has  nothing  in  com- 
mon with  the  method  of  scientific  inquiry.  And  it 
is  much  more  inapplicable  in  practical  life.  We  are 
bound  to  satisfy  ourselves  that  what  seem  to  be  duties . 
are  duties;  but  duties  once  recognised  are  not  to  be 
neglected  or  imperfectly  performed  while  we  go  wan- 
dering in  all  directions  in  quest  of  reasons  which  may 
counterbalance  those  that  seem  to  show  them  to  be 
duties.  Truth  and  duty  being  once  in  any  measure 
seen,  our  chief  business  in  regard  to  them  is  to  follow 
them  up,  to  try  to  know  them  better,  and  to  realise 
them  as  fully  as  we  can  in  our  minds  and  lives, — not 
to  go  on  devising  and  collecting  objections  to  them 
until  we  are  unable  to  distinguish  them  from  their  op- 
posites,  and  so  can  persuade  ourselves  that  we  need 
'not  trouble  ourselves  about  them.  The  man  who,  in 
presence  of  the  evidence  for  a  God  of  power,  wisdom, 

450 


"THE    WILL"   TO   BELIEVE 

and  righteousness  presented  by  the  physical  universe, 
by  the  human  mind,  by  the  wondrous  history  of  our 
race,  and  especially,  perhaps,  by  its  religious  history, 
culminating  as  that  does  in  Christianity,  instead  of 
attending  to  it  with  serious  and  impartial  mind,  goes 
gathering  up  such  poor  and  slight  objections  to  it  as 
sceptics  have  been  able  to  adduce,  and  tries  to  per- 
suade himself  that  their  united  weight  is  equal  to  the 
mighty  sum  of  the  Divine  self -manifestation,  is  great- 
ly to  be  pitied,  but  also  much  to  be  blamed.  His 
method  of  procedure  is  rationally  and  morally  wrong. 
It  is  a  method  which  anti-theological  agnostics  have 
not  infrequently  followed. 

In  connection  with  the  point  to  which  our  attention 
is  now  directed,  the  distinction  on  which  Dr.  Chal- 
mers loved  to  expatiate — the  distinction  between  the 
ethics  and  the  objects  of  theology — is  indubitably  real 
and  of  the  greatest  importance.  The  mere  probabil- 
ity that  there  is  a  God  lays  us  under  the  strongest 
obligation  to  seek  Him  with  earnestness  in  every  way 
within  our  reach.  If  He  may  be  known  it  is  criminal 
in  us  not  to  know  Him.  Ignorance  of  Him  may  be 
only  less  reprehensible  than  conscious  impiety.  I 
refer  my  readers  to  Dr.  Chalmers'  own  pages.  ^ 

IV.     "  THE    WILL  "  AND    "  THE     WISH  ''     TO    BELIEVE 

I  have  not  put  forward  in  the  preceding  observa- 
tions any  plea  for  a  less  careful  or  strict  investiga- 
tion of  the  claims  of  religion  than  of  other  things. 
To  have  done  so  would  have  shown  distrust  of  relig- 
ion and  been  wrong  in  itself.     Although  belief  in  re- 

» See  Chalmer's  Natural  Theology^  ch.  i.,  ii 
451 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

ligion  may  be  more  important  than  belief  in  aught 
else,  and  although  we  may  not  unnaturally  desire  to 
believe  what  promises  to  be  so  beneficial  to  us  as  pure 
religion,  it  does  not  follow  that  we  should  believe  it 
without  adequate  scrutiny.  All  religion  not  self-con- 
scious of  falsehood  challenges  inquiry,  and  will  not 
object  to  inquiry  being  searching  provided  it  be 
honest. 

Professor  William  James  and  Mr.  Wilfrid  Ward 
have  written  ingeniously  and  attractively,  the  former 
on  "  The  Will  to  Believe  "  and  the  latter  on  "  The 
Wish  to  Believe,"  and  in  doing  so  have  emphasised 
some  important  truths ;  but  I  cannot  ascribe  as  much 
power  or  right  to  "  willing  "  and  "  wishing  "  in  rela- 
tion to  "  belief  "  as  they  seem  to  do.  The  view  taken 
of  "  will  "  by  Professor  James  appears  to  me  to  wrap 
the  subject  he  discusses  in  a  distorting  and  i3onfusing 
haze.  A  "  will  "  virtually  identified  with  our  "  non- 
intellectual  "  or  "  passional  nature  "  is  not  real  will, 
not  will  either  in  its  ordinary  or  its  proper  psycho- 
logical acceptation,  and  its  relationship  to  belief  must 
be  on  the  whole  very  different  from  that  of  will,  prop- 
erly understood,  to  belief.  Will — volition  or  cona- 
tion— has  often  a  great  influence  on  belief,  but  it 
never  affects  it  directly.  There  is  no  such  act  of 
mind  possible  as  willing  to  believe  what  does  not 
seem  to  be  true  or  promise  to  give  pleasure,  or,  in 
other  words,  which  seems  destitute  of  any  reason  or 
evidence  for  its  being  deemed  true  or  good.  By  will- 
ing we  can  give  attention  to  a  subject,  study  it  long 
and  earnestly  or  only  hastily  and  superficially,  and  in 
appropriate  or  inapi)ropriate*ways,  but  we  cannot  by 

452 


VIEWS  OF  JAMES  AND  WARD 

any  exertion  of  will  force  ourselves  to  believe  any 
proposition  on  any  subject  beyond  what  seems  to  us 
to  be  the  evidence  for  it.  There  is  no  mere  "  will  to 
believe  " ;  a  merely  willed  belief  is  a  sham  belief,  no 
real  belief.  Dr.  James  rightly  tells  us  that  religious 
belief  is  of  supreme  importance ;  that  it  presents  to 
us  a  momentous  option ;  that  the  option  is  a  forced 
one;  that  scepticism  is  not  avoidance  of  option  but  is 
option  of  a  certain  particular  kind  of  risk ;  and  that 
the  agnostic  advice  to  keep  the  willing  nature  out  of 
the  game  is  an  impossible  one,  seeing  that  not  to  de- 
cide is  itself  to  decide,  just  like  deciding  yes  or  no, 
and  attended  with  the  same  risks ;  but  the  inference 
which  he  draws  from  these  important  considerations 
— the  inference  that  we  not  only  lawfully  may  but 
must  decide  in  the  case  of  such  belief  not  on  intel- 
lectual but  on  passional  grounds — is  neither  true  nor 
relevant.  Why  must  we  so  decide  ?  Because,  says 
Dr.  James,  there  are  cases  where  genuine  options  are 
of  such  a  nature  that  they  cannot  be  decided  on  in- 
tellectual grounds.  He  has  not  shown,  however,  that 
there  are  any  such  cases.  In  professing  to  do  so  he 
has  even  made  the  mistake,  truly  extraordinary  in  so 
eminent  a  psychologist,  of  substituting  throughout  for 
options  of  belief,  which  would  alone  be  relevant,  op- 
tions of  action,  which  are  utterly  irrelevant.  Will  is 
essentially  action.  It  only  indirectly  influences  be- 
lief. To  point  to  instances  where  men  will  to  act  al- 
though the  likelihood  of  their  acting  successfully  be 
small  is  not  in  the  least  a  proof  of  their  acting  in 
these  instances  on  passional,  not  intellectual,  grounds. 
A  man,  placed  in  circumstances  where  he  perceives 

453 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

that  his  chances  of  being  able  by  self-exertion  to  es- 
cape destruction  are  only  as  one  to  a  hundred,  has  not 
only  reason  for  the  most  energetic  action  but  far  more 
reason  than  one  who  perceives  that  his  chances  of  es- 
cape are  as  ninety-nine  to  a  hundred.  Certainly  will- 
ing, as  Dr.  James  says,  cannot  be  kept  out  of  the  game 
of  believing,  but  as  certainly  it  cannot  force  the  mind 
to  believe  what  presents  to  it  no  appearance  of  evi- 
dence. The  part  which  willing  has  in  the  game  is 
this:  the  mind  can  either  will  to  follow  along  the 
paths  on  which  the  light  of  truth  shines,  and  in  which 
alone  therefore  right  belief  can  be  attained,  or  will  to 
deviate  from  them,  and  so  wander  into  regions  of 
darkness  and  delusion.  Through  a  right  use  of  his 
will  a  man  may  arrive  at  certitude  as  to  the  highest 
truths  his  spiritual  nature  needs,  and  by  the  abuse  of 
it  he  may  remain  ignorant  of  them  or  become  a  dis- 
believer in  them. 

As  regards  "  the  wish  to  believe,"  it  is  true  that  we 
are,  as  a  rule,  easily  persuaded  to  believe  what  we 
wish  to  believe.  The  wish  that  anything  be  true  is 
often  father  to  the  thought  that  that  thing  is  true. 
The  most  candid  minds  cannot  avoid  desiring  that 
certain  beliefs  may  be  found  true  and  others  not. 
And  for  that  they  are  not  to  be  blamed,  seeing  that 
it  is  inevitable.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  characteris- 
tic of  all  candid  minds  not  to  let  their  wishes,  their 
inclinations,  pass  with  them  as  reasons  for  belief,  and 
so  unduly  to  influence  their  judgments.  "  The  wish 
to  believe,"  so  far  from  being  with  a  man  of  good 
sense  and  intellectual  honesty  a  reason  for  believing 
what  he  wishes,  is  a  reason  for  his  being  specially 

454 


DANGER  OF  WILLING  TO  BELIEVE 

careful  and  cautious  in  his  inquiries  as  to  whether 
what  he  wishes  to  believe  be  really  true  or  not.  "  If," 
writes  Archbishop  Whatelej,  "  a  mode  of  effectual 
and  speedy  cure  be  proposed  to  a  sick  man,  he  cannot 
but  wish  that  the  result  of  his  inquiries  concerning  it 
may  be  a  well-founded  conviction  of  the  safety  and 
efficacy  of  the  remedy  prescribed.  It  would  be  no 
mark  of  wisdom  to  be  indifferent  to  the  restoration  of 
health,  but  if  his  wishes  should  lead  him  (as  is  fre- 
quently the  case)  to  put  implicit  confidence  in  the 
remedy  without  any  just  grounds  for  it,  he  would  de- 
servedly be  taxed  with  folly.  In  like  manner,  a  good 
man  will  indeed  wish  to  find  the  evidence  of  the 
Christian  religion  satisfactory,  but  will  weigh  the 
evidence  more  carefully  on  account  of  the  importance 
of  the  question."  Taking  this  view,  I  cannot  but 
think  that  those  who  say  "  believe  what  you  wish," 
"  believe  what  is  in  the  line  of  your  needs,"  "  believe 
that  life  is  worth  living,  and  your  belief  will  help 
create  the  fact,"  give  imperfect  and  dangerous  advice, 
and  instead  of  helping  to  refute  the  agnostic  play  into 
his  hands.  Believe  in  the  line  of  your  duties  would 
be  a  better  advice,  but  better  because  duties  imply 
clear  and  imperative  perceptions  of  reason.  A  rea- 
soned pessimist  cannot  be  a  voluntary  optimist.  A 
merely  willed  belief  that  "  life  is  worth  living,"  were 
such  belief  possible,  would  not  help  to  create  the  fact. 
No  belief  not  inclusive  of  a  sense  of  resting  on  truth 
can  produce  good. 

I  should  be  sorry  to  exaggerate  the  influence  of 
such  passional  and  ethical  causes  of  anti-theological 
agnosticism  as  those  which  have  now  been  indicated. 

455 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  GOD 

I  am  quite  ready  to  grant  that  there  are  anti-theolog- 
ical agnostics  whose  agnosticism  is  not  to  he  referred 
to  their  operation;  and  that  they  account  more  di- 
rectly and  extensively  for  religious  indifference  and 
ohtuseness  than  for  anti-religious  scepticism.  Genu- 
ine agnostics,  even  when  they  relegate  religious  truth 
to  the  region  of  the  unknowable,  are  never  men  de- 
void of  curiosity  as  to  religious  truth,  and  seldom  men 
devoid  of  susceptibility  to  religious  influences.  It  is 
pathetic,  indeed,  to  observe  how  many  of  them  strug- 
gle to  retain,  or  cannot  forego,  the  religious  sentiments 
which  they  have  sought  to  show  have  no  foundation 
or  warrant  in  reason  or  fact;  how  many  of  them  are 
religious  in  heart  and  life  in  spite  of  their  anti-religious 
agnosticism  of  intellect.  Passional  and  ethical  causes, 
however,  of  the  kind  indicated,  have  unquestionably 
been  real  and  powerful  causes  of  anti-religious  agnos- 
ticism. Whatever  tends  to  make  men  unspiritual, 
worldly,  selfish,  is  favourable  to  it;  all  that  tends  to 
raise  them  above  unspirituality,  worldliness,  selfish- 
ness, is  unfavourable ;  and  the  strongest  of  all  agnostic 
forces — the  one  great  safeguard  of  humanity  against 
the  general  or  final  triumph  of  an  anti-religious  ag- 
nosticism— is  none  other  than  the  redemptive  power 
of  the  Gospel  of  Christ  manifested  in  the  strengthen- 
ing, purifying,  and  ennobling  of  the  characters  and 
lives  of  individuals  and  nations. 


456 


CHAPTEE   IX 

AGNOSTICISM  AS   TO   RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

All  questions  regarding  agnosticism  as  to  religion  are 
connected  either  with  knowledge  or  belief,  and  must 
always  be  taken  into  consideration  in  connection  with 
both.  I  shall  attempt  to  deal  with  such  ag-nosticism, 
in  the  first  place,  so  far  as  it  is  connected  with  belief. 

There  are  few  subjects  more  worthy  of  study  than 
belief.  The  power  of  belief,  true  or  false,  for  good 
or  evil,  is  incalculable.  Individual  character  largely 
depends  on  personal  belief.  History  has  been  mainly 
just  what  common  belief  has  made  it.  So  long  as 
men's  beliefs  as  to  things  were  regulated  not  by 
evidence  but  by  authority  there  could  be  no  science. 
Where  there  is  a  servile  faith  in  the  heart  there  can- 
not be  freedom  in  outward  relations.  "While  a  people 
believes  itself  to  have  been  divinely  divided  into  castes 
it  must  be  the  victim  of  injustice  and  oppression; 
while  it  believes  polygamy  to  be  a  divinely  authorised 
institution  it  cannot  reap  the  fruits  of  domestic  virtue. 
Truth  believed  alone  makes  a  people  truly  enlight- 
ened, free,  and  moral.  All  the  religions  of  the  world 
have  sprung  from  a  few  momentous  beliefs;  and  all 
the  civilisations  of  the  world  have  originated  in  its 
religions. 

It  is  especially  incumbent  on  both  the  philosopher 
and  the  theologian  to  seek  to  have  correct  views  as 
to  belief. 

457 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  KELIGIOUS  BELIEF 


I.    THEOBIES   AS    TO   BELIEF 

The  worth  of  a  philosophy,  it  is  now  universally 
recognised,  greatly  depends  on  what  is  commonly 
called  its  Epistemology, — its  theory  of  the  import, 
validity,  limits,  and  conditions  of  knowledge.  But 
a  theory  of  knowledge  cannot  be  worked  out  apart 
from  a  theory  of  belief.  The  validity  of  knowledge 
and  the  legitimacy  of  belief  are  themes  which  cannot 
be  rationally  disjoined.  The  question,  Within  what 
limits  is  human  knowledge  possible?  is,  if  not  virtu- 
ally identical  with,  certainly  inseparable  from,  the 
question.  What  are  the  limits  of  legitimate  belief? 
And  the  question.  On  what  conditions  is  human 
knowledge  attainable?  is,  in  like  manner,  if  not  iden- 
tical with,  certainly  inseparable  from,  the  question, 
What  conditions  must  we  conform  to  in  order  to  be 
entitled  to  believe?  In  a  word,  a  doctrine  of  knowl- 
edge and  a  doctrine  of  belief  are  not  so  much  two 
distinct  doctrines  as  two  sides  or  aspects  of  one  and 
the  same  doctrine, — a  doctrine  which  may  be  called, 
with  almost  equal  propriety,  either  Epistemology  or 
Pisteology. 

But  religious  science,  theology,  while  intimately 
related  to  philosophy  as  a  whole,  is  to  no  other  part 
of  it  so  intimately  related  as  to  that  which  concerns 
itself  with  epistemological  or  pisteological  problems. 
Every  form  of  theology  assumes  and  implies  a  doc- 
trine of  the  limits  and  conditions  of  knowledge  and 
belief.  If  a  theologian  of  the  present  day  show  him- 
self unconscious  of  this  fact  one  may  be  excused  for 
thinking  that  he  has  been  born  out  of  due  season  and 

458 


THEORIES   OF  BELIEF   NECESSARY 

should  surely  have  lived  in  some  former  age  of  the 
world.  It  is  a  matter  of  comparative  indifference 
whether  a  theologian  regard  his  theory  of  knowledge 
and  belief  as  an  introduction  to  his  system  of  theology 
or  as  a  part  of  it;  but  it  is  not  a  matter  of  indiffer- 
ence that  he  should  see,  and  see  clearly,  that  if  an 
introduction  it  is  an  indispensable  one,  and  one  Which 
should  vindicate  the  method  and  principles  of  all  his 
subsequent  procedure;  and  that  if  a  part  it  is  a  funda- 
mental part,  the  very  basis  on  which  the  whole  struct- 
ure he  would  rear  must  stand.  Theology  can  only 
make  good  its  right  even  to  existence  through  the 
refutation  of  various  widespread  theories  of  belief  and 
knowledge. 

The  theologian  requires  to  have  a  theory  of  belief. 
It  is  not  enough  that  he  should  have  merely  a  theory 
of  religious  belief,  or  of  specifically  Christian  belief, 
such  as  some  theologians  have  sought  to  provide.  Not 
enough  for  this  simple  reason  that  religious  belief  is 
only  a  form  of  belief,  and  Christian  faith  only  a  "still 
more  special  form  of  it;  and  consequently  that  what- 
ever is  either  true  or  false  of  belief  as  such  must  be 
so  likewise  of  all  religious  belief  and  of  all  Christian 
faith.  However  much  more  there  may  be  in  any  of 
the  forms  of  belief  than  there  is  in  its  general  nature, 
there  cannot  reasonably  be  attributed  to  them  any- 
thing which  is  inconsistent  with  that  nature.  A  theo- 
logian who  opposes  to  an  obnoxious  general  theory 
either  of  belief  or  cognition  a  specifically  religious  or 
Christian  one  shows  an  utter  want  of  perspicacity. 
Until  he  has  displaced  the  obnoxious  general  theory 
with  a  satisfactory  general  one  there  is  no  room  or 
standing-ground  for  his  special  theory. 

459 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

It  is  not  then  witli  exclusively  religious  belief  but 
with  belief  itself  in  relation  to  religion  and  to  scepti- 
cism as  regards  religion  that  we  have  here  to  concern 
ourselves. 

Belief  is,  however,  an  essential  element  in  religion. 
Wherever  there  is  religion  there  is  at  the  root  of  it  a 
belief  in  what  may  be  called  the  Divine.  All  religion 
is  founded  on  such  belief.  It  may  be  dissociated  from 
truth  and  knowledge  but  not  from  belief.  The  mul- 
titude of  worships  in  the  world  represents  a  corre- 
sponding multitude  of  beliefs.  The  character  of  any 
particular  worship  is  an  expression  of  the  belief  en- 
tertained regarding  the  object  of  worship.  The  lowest 
religion  as  well  as  the  highest  implies  in  the  minds  of 
those  influenced  by  it  some  sort  of  creed  which  elicits 
their  feelings  and  determines  their  actions.  Theism 
is  the  belief  that  there  is  one  God,  the  ever-living 
Creator  of  the  universe  and  Father  of  spirits.  Pan- 
theism is  the  belief  in  the  essential  identity  and  in- 
separability of  God  and  the  universe.  Polytheism  is 
the  belief  in  many  beings  deemed  divine  by  those  who 
worship  them.  Belief  being  thus  the  condition  of  all 
religion,  and  consequently  of  all  theology,  a  theory  or 
study  of  belief  naturally  precedes  all  theology,  all 
scientific  study  of  religion. 

The  term  belief  may  be  used  either  in  a  subjective 
or  an  objective  sense:  either  of  the  mental  act,  the 
state  of  consciousness  so-called,  or  of  what  is  believed, 
be  it  a  fact  or  proposition,  a  person  or  creed.  In 
N.T.  and  ecclesiastical  Greek  the  term  Trio-rt?  is 
similarly  ambiguous.  For  example,  throughout  the 
Gospels  it  is  only  found  in  a  subjective  sense,  while 

460 


WHAT   BELIEF  IS   AND  18   NOT 

in  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  and  the  Epistles  it  so  fre- 
quently occurs  in  an  objective  sense  as  to  have  led 
some  critics  to  maintain  that  the  preaching  of  the 
Apostles  was  essentially  different  from  that  of  Christ. 
So  in  theological  Latin  fides  may  mean  either  fides 
qua  creditur  or  fides  quw  creditur.  And  German 
theologians  in  treating  of  Glaube  often  so  arbitrarily 
interchange,  combine,  or  confuse  the  two  significations 
of  the  term  as  to  make  their  dissertations  almost 
worthless.  Therefore  let  me  say  that  here  I  am  treat- 
ing of  belief  only  in  its  primary  and  alone  strictly 
proper  sense — its  subjective  signification. 

Belief  is  a  peculiar  state  of  mind,  a  kind  of  con- 
scious experience,  which  it  is  not  difficult  to  distin- 
guish from  various  other  states  of  mind  or  kinds  of 
conscious  experience.  It  is  distinct,  for  instance, 
from  any  particular  kind  of  knowledge,  inasmuch  as 
it  accompanies  every  kind  of  knowledge  and  extends 
even  far  beyond  the  bounds  of  knowledge.  And  yet, 
as  will  be  shown  in  due  time,  it  has  often  been 
both  identified  with  and  opposed  to  knowledge  in 
various  ways  preventive  of  clear  and  just  views  of 
religion. 

There  is,  perhaps,  no  function  of  mind  so  easily 
distinguishable  from  belief  as  imagination.  Generally 
they  are  separated.  Only  in  exceptional  and  patho- 
logical conditions,  as  in  dreaming,  hallucination,  and 
insanity,  does  imagination  become  so  confused  in  con- 
sciousness with  sense,  intellection,  and  feeling,  as  to 
draw  to  itself  belief,  so  that  its  creations  and  sug- 
gestions seem  realities. 

From  feeling  also  belief  is  distinct.     Feeling  in 
461 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

itself — feeling  apart  from  all  perception  and  intel- 
lection— is  a  purely  subjective  affection,  having  even 
no  reference  to  an  object.  Belief,  on  the  contrary, 
has  always  reference  to  an  object.  It  is  always  belief 
of  or  about  something.  And  we  may  believe  things 
unrelated  to  our  feelings.  Space,  time,  number,  and 
their  properties  are  objects  of  belief,  and  supply  the 
contents  of  whole  systems  of  belief,  without  directly 
exciting  any  feelings. 

Belief  is,  further,  neither  desire  nor  volition.  Both 
desire  and  volition  presuppose  belief  and  often  power- 
fully react  on  belief,  but  they  are  specifically  distinct 
from  it  in  at  least  one  marked  respect.  Desire  and 
volition  alike  tend  towards  an  end.  A  striving  tow- 
ards an  end,  and  therewith  some  reference  to  the 
future,  are  essential  to  both.  But  it  is  not  so  with 
belief;  it  refers  to  being  or  not-being,  to  being  so  or 
being  otherwise,  and  may  rest  entirely  in  the  present 
or  past. 

Belief  is  a  primordial  fact  of  consciousness.  The 
mind  brings  with  it  into  the  world  the  capacity  of 
believing,  just  as  it  brings  with  it  the  capacity  of 
feeling.  The  first  acts  of  consciousness  involve  it  not 
less  than  the  latest.  It  is  a  simple,  ultimate,  and 
consequently  unanalysable  mental  state.  It  cannot 
be  decomposed  because  it  has  not  been  compounded. 
All  attempts  to  show  that  belief  has  grown  out  of 
more  rudimentary  conscious  states  and  may  be  re- 
solved into  more  elementary  mental  constituents  may 
safely  be  held  to  have  failed. 

We  are  not  to  infer  from  belief  being  thus  simple 
that  a  comprehensive  knowledge  of  it  must  be  easily 

462 


HUME'S    THEORY    OF    BELIEF 

attainable.  Such  is  certainly  not  the  case.  The 
simple  elements  of  mind,  like  the  simple  elements 
of  chemistry,  demand  from  those  who  would  become 
thoroughly  acquainted  with  them  protracted  and  ex- 
tensive investigations.  A  thorough  knowledge  of  any 
one  of  them  supposes  a  knowledge  of  all  of  them. 
They  enter  in  different  ways  and  proportions  into  a 
multitude  of  compounds,  and  how  they  do  so  is  a 
very  large  subject  for  study.  To  know  fully  what 
belief  is  we  should  require  to  know  far  more  about 
its  connection  with  thought,  feeling,  emotion,  desire, 
and  volition,  and  how  it  contributes  to  constitute  and 
modify  the  complex  manifestations  of  mind  in  the 
individual  and  in  history,  than  psychology  has  yet 
discovered.  The  more  necessary  is  it  for  us,  there- 
fore, to  treat  of  it  only  so  far  as  the  end  we  have  in 
view  demands. 

Hume  was,  perhaps,  the  first  agnostic  to  recognise 
that  he  required  an  agnostic  theory  of  belief.  The 
Greek  sceptics  and  their  successors  had  before  Hume 
clearly  seen  that  they  were  bound  to  discredit  beliefs 
of  all  kinds,  and  they  attempted  to  do  so  by  tracing 
them  to  non-rational  causes,  by  representing  them  as 
contradictory  of  one  another  immediately  or  in  their 
consequences,  and  by  calling  in  question  their  alleged 
criteria,  &c.  The  more  they  might  seem  to  succeed, 
however,  in  these  efforts,  the  more  inexplicable  they 
made  the  very  existence  of  belief  to  appear,  seeing 
that  belief  is  of  its  very  nature  an  assumption  and 
assertion  of  the  existence  of  knowledge  and  truth. 
Belief  in  its  essential  being  is  a  much  more  formid- 
able obstacle  to  a  rational  acceptance  of  scepticism 

463 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

than  anything  in  the  characters  of  particular  beliefs 
or  in  the  differences  of  kinds  of  belief.  Hence  Hume 
as  a  sceptic  showed  both  perspicacity  and  consistency 
in  seeking  for  a  theory  of  belief  itself,  and  such  a 
theory  as  would  at  once  explain  and  explain  away  the 
reference  to  knowledge  and  truth  which  is  the  most 
distinctive  peculiarity  of  belief.  That  was  precisely 
what  he  attempted  to  accomplish.  Reminding  his 
readers  that  "  belief  has  never  yet  been  explained  by 
any  philosopher,"  he  proceeded  to  give  an  explana- 
tion of  his  own, — a  thoroughly  agnostic  one.  Beliefs, 
according  to  his  contention,  are  distinguished  from 
non-beliefs,  from  imaginations,  not  by  any  real  or 
supposed  apprehension  of  evidence  but  by  vivacity  or 
strength  of  conceptions  or  impressions.  The  liveli- 
ness of  the  former  is  the  sole  difference  between  them 
and  the  latter.  "  We  must  not  be  contented  with 
saying  that  the  vividness  of  the  idea  produces  the 
belief,  we  must  maintain  that  they  are  individually 
the  same."  "  The  belief  or  assent  which  always 
attends  the  memory  and  senses  is  nothing  but  the 
vivacity  of  those  perceptions  they  represent,  and  this 
alone  distinguishes  them  from  imagination." 

The  explanation  is  very  unsatisfactory.  It  pro- 
ceeds on  a  manifest  ignoring  of  the  real  nature  of 
the  fact  professedly  explained.  But  it  is  vain  to  at- 
tempt to  account  for  anything  by  implicitly  denying 
it  to  be  what  it  is.  Belief  is  found  only  as  belief  of 
what  appears  to  be  true;  never  as  anything  else.  To 
begin  by  referring  it  to  mere  vivacity  and  force  of 
conceptions  is,  consequently,  to  refer  it  to  what  it 
Tiever  is,  in  order  to  infer  it  not  to  he  what  it  always 

464 


IMAGINATION    AND    BELIEF 

appears  to  he.  In  a  word,  it  is  to  start  by  implicitly 
denying  what  is  distinctive  of  and  essential  in  belief 
as  a  fact  of  consciousness,  with  a  view  to  being  able 
explicitly  to  conclude  that  the  fact  is  an  illusion. 

Further,  imagination,  which  is  unaccompanied  by 
belief,  is  often  livelier  and  stronger  than  memory, 
which  is  accompanied  by  it.  The  evidences  on  which 
we  assent  to  truths  or  facts  often  make  feebler  im- 
pressions on  us  than  the  objects-  present  only  to  our 
phantasies.  From  the  pages  of  Dickens  we  get  live- 
lier ideas  of  Sam  Weller  and  Oliver  Twist  than  we 
get  of  the  Saxon  or  Swabian  monarchs  from  those  of 
the  most  critical  historians;  but  we  do  not  on  that  ac- 
count believe  in  the  fictitious  personages  or  disbelieve 
in  the  historical  ones.  The  impressions  received  from 
witnessing  a  great  drama  well  acted  are  deep  and 
strong,  but  they  are  not  beliefs  in  any  sane  mature 
mind.  Hume's  psychology  of  belief  was  hopelessly 
at  fault  in  confounding  the  sense  of  reality  which 
imagination  may  produce  with  that  which  evidence 
produces.  It  went  far  in  the  way  of  effacing  the  line 
of  distinction  between  history  and  poetry.  Hence, 
perhaps,  we  may  appropriately  close  our  review  of 
it  with  the  following  sonnet  of  Charles  F.  Johnson 
on  these  twain,  "  History  and  Poetry  " : — 

' '  Three  men  seem  real  as  living  men  we  know 
The  Florentine,  whose  face,  woe-worn  and  dark, 
Rossetti  drew  ;  the  Norman  Duke,  *  so  stark 

Of  arm  that  none  but  him  might  draw  his  bow,' 

And  'gentle  Shakespeare,'  though  enshrouded  so 
In  his  own  thought,  that  some  men  cannot  mark 
The  soul  his  book  reveals,  as  when  a  lark 

Sings  from  a  cloud,  unseen  by  men  below. 
465 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

But  still  more  real  than  these  seem  other  three 
Who  never  walked  on  earth  ;  '  Hamlet  the  Dane  '  ; 
The  *  noble  Moor  '  ;  the  cruel  Scottish  thane, 

Ambition's  thrall.     How  strange  that  they  should  be, 
Though  nought  but  figments  of  the  poet's  brain. 

Instinct  with  life,  and  yet  more  real  than  he."  ' 

James  Mill,  under  the  influence  of  Hume  and 
Hartley,  was  led  to  attach  to  the  association  of  ideas 
an  even  excessive  importance  for  the  explanation  of 
mental  phenomena.  Among  his  applications  of  it 
was  an  attempt  to  improve  on  Hume's  theory  of  the 
genesis  of  belief.  He  agreed  with  Hume  in  holding 
that  there  was  no  generic  distinction  between  a  case 
of  belief  and  a  case  of  imagination.  He  did  not, 
however,  deem  it,  like  Hume,  sufficient  to  represent 
them  as  merely  instances  of  more  and  less  lively 
impression.  He  further  sought  to  trace  the  differ- 
ence as  regards  liveliness  of  impression  between  cases 
of  belief  and  cases  of  mere  imagination  to  a  corre- 
sponding but  deeper  difference  between  them  as  re- 
gards strength  of  association.  The  difference  in  the 
strength  of  the  association  between  a  case  of  belief 
and  a  case  of  imagination  is,  according  to  him,  what 
ultimately  differentiates  them  from  each  other.  ''  To 
believe  a  succession  or  co-existence  between  two  facts 
is  only  to  have  the  ideas  of  the  two  facts  so  strongly 
and  closely  associated  that  we  cannot  help  having  the 
one  idea  when  we  have  the  other."  In  a  word,  all 
kinds  of  belief  may  be  reduced  to  cases  of  indissoluble 
association. 

It  was  thus  that  James  "Mill  endeavoured  to  ac- 

>  Temple  Bar,  vol.  96,  No.  382,  p.  26. 
466 


JAMES   MILL   ON    BELIEF 

count  for  belief;  and  the  attempt,  although  of  a 
character  as  agnostic  in  tendency  as  Hume's  own, 
was  one  which  it  was  both  natural  and  legitimate 
for  him  to  make.  It  was,  however,  unsuccessful,  as 
every  attempt  to  trace  belief  to  the  inseparable  as- 
sociation of  ideas  cannot  fail  to  be.  Perceptions  of 
fact  must  precede  ideas,  and  perceptions  of  connec- 
tions of  fact  associations  of  ideas.  But  belief  accom- 
panies all  the  perceptions  of  facts  and  their  connec- 
tions which  are  needed  to  account  for  associations  of 
ideas,  and  cannot  therefore  be  their  effect.  Further, 
one  may  surely  believe  one  thing  or  idea  before 
associating  two  or  more.  The  continuous  association 
of  two  ideas  does  not  make  either  of  them  believed. 
There  may  be  as  much  closeness  of  association  where 
there  is  no  belief  as  where  there  is.  The  ideas  of 
Jupiter  and  of  Juno  are  at  least  as  closely  associated 
as  those  of  the  Emperor  and  Empress  of  Germany, 
yet  only  the  latter  two  personages  are  objects  of 
belief. 

It  must  be  added  that  the  writers  of  the  associa- 
tionist  school  have  failed  to  make  out  that  there  is 
any  such  inseparable  association  of  ideas  as  they  con- 
tend for.  There  are,  indeed,  ideas  which  are  insep- 
arably connected — e.g.,  cause  and  effect,  whole  and 
part,  colour  and  extension.  Such  ideas  are  always 
thought  of  together  and  cannot  be  thought  of  apart; 
they  are  indissolubly  conjoined.  The  associationist, 
however,  does  not  mean  by  the  inseparable  associa- 
tion of  ideas  merely  their  indissoluble  conjunction, 
their  inseparable  connection.  He  means  further  that 
their  conjunction  is  one  which  has  grown  to  be  in- 

467 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  KELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

dissoluble ;  that  their  connection  is  one  which  asso- 
ciation has  made  to  he  inseparable.  And  there  his 
hypothesis  completely  breaks  down.  No  association- 
ist  has  shown  that  any  strictly  indissoluble  association 
has  grown  at  all;  that  any  of  the  ideas  which  cannot 
be  conceived  of  as  existing  apart  either  ever  did  exist 
apart  or  were  ever  able  to  be  thought  of  as  existing 
apart.  Wherever  there  is  any  evidence  of  ideas  hav- 
ing been  connected  by  a  process  of  association  there 
the  ideas  are  always  separable,  no  matter  how  frequent 
and  uninterrupted  may  have  been  their  recurrence. 
Wherever  any  two  ideas  are  found  to  be  really  in- 
separably associated  they  will  also  be  found  to  have 
been  always  so;  to  have  never  been  even  conceivable 
apart;  and,  therefore,  not  to  have  been  connected  by 
association  at  all.  Associationists  have  not  discov- 
ered a  single  case  of  conjunction  undoubtedly  pro- 
duced by  association  which  has  become  inseparable. 
It  is  only  necessary  truth  that  links  ideas  indissolubly 
together.  In  a  word,  the  so-called  law  by  which 
associationists  have  professed  to  explain  belief  is  itself 
wholly  unproved.^ 

J.  S.  Mill  recognised  that  his  father's  account  of 
the  origin  of  belief  was  untenable,  and  that  belief 
must  be  admitted  to  be  a  primordial  and  unanalys- 
able fact.  He  further  saw  that  a  distinction  ignored 
or  obscured  by  his  father  and  other  associationists, 
the  distinction  between  memory  and  imagination,  was 
an  ultimate  one.     But  he  fell  into  the  mistake  of 

'See  in  Mtnd^  vol.  i. ,  art  of  the  author  on  "  Associationism 
and  the  Ongin  of  Moral  Ideas," 

468 


J.    S.    MILL    ON    BELIEF 

referring  all  belief  to  memory  and  expectation.  He 
might  rather  have  referred  all  memory  and  expecta- 
tion to  belief,  as  memory  is  belief  in  the  past  and 
expectation  implies  belief  in  the  future.  Belief,  how- 
ever, has  a  much  wider  sphere  than  both  memory  and 
expectation  taken  together.  It  does  not  refer  merely 
to  the  past  and  the  future.  There  is  belief  in  im- 
mediate present  experience.  There  is  belief  in  nec- 
essary or  what  may  be  called  non-temporal  truth. 
Belief  in  neither  of  these  forms  can  be  legitimately 
reduced  or  referred  to  memory  or  expectation.  Hence 
belief  as  such  is  neither  resolvable  nor  divisible  into 
memory  and  expectation. 

One  of  the  most  eminent  of  contemporary  psychol- 
ogists, Dr.  Bain,  has  discussed  the  nature  of  belief 
at  considerable  length,  and  in  a  very  original  and 
instructive  way.  I  feel  unable  to  accept  the  general 
conclusions  at  which  he  has  arrived.  At  the  same 
time,  I  am  sensible  that  but  for  his  inquiry  my  own 
views  regarding  the  subject  of  it  would  have  been 
less  definite  than  they  are,  and  fully  recognise  that 
many  of  his  observations  and  illustrations  have  a  sug- 
gestiveness  and  value  which  are  independent  of  his 
generalisations. 

It  is  only  with  his  general  findings  as  to  the  nature 
of  belief,  however,  that  I  have  to  do.  They  may, 
perhaps,  be  summed  up  thus: — 

1°.  Action  is  the  basis  of  belief. 

2°.  It  is  also  the  ultimate  criterion  of  belief. 

3°.  Primitive  credulity  is  a  fundamental  fact  of 
belief. 

469 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

4°.  Cognisance  of  the  order  of  nature  is  a  neces- 
sary element  in  belief.     And 

5°.  The  opposite  of  belief  is  not  disbelief  but 
doubt  or  uncertainty. 

Now,  it  seems  to  me  that  all  these  propositions  are 
inaccurate,  and  that  the  following  counter-proposi- 
tions are  true: — 

1°.  Belief  is  not  based  on  action  but  on  intellection. 

2°.  Action  or  preparedness  to  act  is  not  a  test  of 
belief  but  only  of  fidelity  to  certain  kinds  of  belief. 

3°.  There  is  no  mental  fact  answering  to  what  Dr. 
Bain  calls  "  primitive  credulity." 

4°.  Cognisance  of  the  order  of  nature  is  not  a 
necessary  element  in  belief.     And 

5°.  The  opposite  of  belief  is  neither  disbelief  nor 
doubt  but  the  absence  of  belief. 

Let  us  glance  at  these  antagonistic  positions.  And, 
first,  as  to  the  basis  of  belief.  Dr.  Bain  very  justly 
opposes  the  identification  of  belief  with  either  knowl- 
edge or  emotion,  and  also  does  good  service  in  mak- 
ing apparent  the  extent  and  efiiciency  of  its  influence 
on  the  whole  appetent  and  energising  nature  of  man. 
The  significance  of  belief  undoubtedly  largely  de- 
pends on  the  closeness  and  range  of  its  contact  with 
the  emotional  and  volitional  principles  of  the  mind. 
It  owes  thereto  a  vast  amount  of  the  power  which  it 
exercises  in  individual  life  and  manifests  in  history. 
Yet  none  the  less  it  is,  I  think,  properly  regarded  by 
almost  all  psychologists  as  mainly  an  intellectual 
phenomenon.  Its  only  immediate  and  universal  an- 
tecedent is  judgment.  Tts  root  is  thus  in  intelligence 
and  not  in  will  in  Dr.  Bain's  sense,  and  still  less  in 

470 


DE.    BAIN    ON    BELIEF 

its  ordinary  psychological  sense.  It  is  not  grounded 
in  action.  Action  implies  belief.  There  is  no  prop- 
erly human  action  possible  or  conceivable  except 
action  based  on  belief.  But  this  is  sufficient  to  show 
that  action  cannot  be  the  basis  of  belief.  It  cannot 
be  the  foundation  of  its  own  foundation.  Its  real 
basis  is  obvious.  It  is  intellection, — true  or  false 
judgment,  and  the  processes  which  lead  to  true  or 
false  judgment. 

Secondly,  there  are  the  contrary  positions  as  to  the 
criterion  or  test  of  belief.  According  to  Dr.  Bain, 
acting  or  preparedness  to  act  is  the  criterion.  A  belief 
is  not  a  mere  notion  but  a  state  of  mind  that  we  act 
or  would  be  likely  to  act  on.  It  has  always  a  refer- 
ence, more  or  less  remote,  to  action;  and  that  it  has 
such  a  reference  is  what  entitles  it  to  be  termed  belief. 
Now,  I  admit  that  all  belief  may  have  some  sort  of 
reference,  direct  or  indirect,  to  action;  or,  at  least, 
that  it  can  be  imagined  to  have  some  such  reference: 
and  further  admit  that  readiness  to  act  is  the  best 
test  we  can  have  of  the  sincerity  of  beliefs  which 
directly  demand  practical  conformity.  But  I  cannot 
concede  more.  Readiness  to  act  is  clearly  no  cri- 
terion of  the  truth  of  belief,  for  it  accompanies  false 
as  well  as  true  belief, — sheer  fanaticism  often  even 
more  than  the  faith  which  rests  wholly  on  reality. 
Nor  does  it  differentiate  belief  from  knowledge,  see- 
ing that  knowledge  in  common  with  belief  tends  to 
express  itself  in  action.  Nor  from  feeling  and  de- 
sire, the  references  of  which  to  acting  and  prepared- 
ness to  act  are  as  obvious  and  direct  as  that  of  belief. 
It  is,  in  fact,  no  criterion  of  belief  as  such.     Belief 

471 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  KELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

per  se  is  just  what  it  is  in  and  for  consciousness,  and 
needs  no  external  criterion  to  distinguish  it  from 
other  mental  facts.  It  may  be  quite  complete  with- 
out prompting  to  or  producing  action.  Mere  "  head- 
belief  "  may  be  as  truly  belief  as  '^  heart-belief,"  and 
yet,  instead  of  originating  like  the  latter  good  works 
and  virtuous  habits,  may  display  itself  only  in  a  nar- 
row and  obstinate  opinionativeness.  Where  evil  pas- 
sions are  strong  and  will  weak  there  may  be  a  real 
belief  in  moral  principles  yet  habitual  contravention 
of  them.  In  the  higher  spheres  of  being  at  least  we 
may  not  be  prepared,  or  even  disposed,  to  act  on 
what  we  believe.  Preparedness  to  act  is  there  the 
test  of  faith  in  a  person  or  of  fidelity  to  spiritual 
truth  and  moral  duty,  but  not  a  criterion  of  belief  as 
such.  And,  passing  to  lower  ground,  a  man  who 
intelligently  follows  a  geometrical  demonstration 
cannot  fail  to  believe  its  conclusion  with  absolute 
conviction,  and  that  without  any  reference  to  action. 
Then,  belief  in  past  events  makes  no  call  for  action. 
Dr.  Bain  himself  admits  this,  but  represents  the  ad- 
mission as  consistent  with  acceptance  of  his  theory. 
He  tells  us  that  had  he  run  up  against  a  wall  yester- 
day to  keep  out  of  the  way  of  a  carriage  his  reason 
for  calling  his  conviction  of  having  done  so  a  belief 
and  not  a  mere  notion  would  be  the  feeling  that  "  were 
there  any  likelihood  of  being  jammed  up  in  that  spot 
again  he  would  not  go  that  way  if  he  could  help  it." 
"  That  feeling,"  he  says,  "  is  quite  enough  to  show 
that,  in  believing  my  memory,  I  have  still  a  reference 
to  action  more  or  less  remote."  It  does  not  seem  to 
me  to  be  so,  for  the  feeling  would  have  no  existence 

472 


AUTHOK'S    THEOllY    OF    BELIEF 

unless  deliberately  evoked  in  a  way  which  takes  away 
all  relevancy  from  the  reference  to  action.  Can  it  be 
doubted  that  Dr.  Bain  would  trust  his  memory  even 
if  he  did  not  exercise  his  imagination  in  the  way  de- 
scribed? An  actual  "  jamming  "  of  the  kind  specified 
is  quite  enough  of  itself  to  produce  a  belief  in  its 
occurrence  without  any  speculation  as  to  a  possible 
future  "  jamming."  The  belief  in  what  happened  is 
fully  accounted  for  by  the  recollection  of  the  actual 
past  experience,  without  any  reference  to  a  similar 
possible  future  experience. 

Notwithstanding  the  foregoing  objections  to  Dr. 
Bain's  view  of  the  criterion  of  belief,  I  recognise  that 
there  is  a  large  measure  of  truth,  and  of  very  impor- 
tant truth,  in  it.  Belief  is  in  countless  cases  a  motive 
to  action,  and  in  such  cases  action  is  often  the  surest, 
and  sometimes  the  only,  evidence  of  the  reality  of  the 
belief.  The  connection  between  belief  and  volition, 
faith  and  practice,  is  of  the  most  comprehensive  and 
intimate  kind,  and  the  correspondence  between  them 
is,  as  a  rule,  easily  traceable.  Where  there  is  a  weak 
and  hesitating  faith  there  cannot  be  a  strong  and 
consistent  life.  A  fully  assured  faith  is  a  mighty 
power  even  when  divorced  from  knowledge.  But,  of 
course,  it  is  a  mightier  when  conjoined  with  it.  Mere 
faith  can  only  give  strength  to  act ;  knowledge  alone 
supplies  the  truth  on  which  to  act;  and  the  world  in 
which  we  live  is  one  wherein  all  effort  to  act  on  what 
is  untrue  must  prove  to  have  been  wasted  energy. 

Thirdly,  reference  has  to  be  made  to  the  "  primi- 
tive credulity  "  reckoned  by  Dr.  Bain  as  a  funda- 
mental fact  of  belief.     In  taking  up  this  position  he 

473 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

rather  strangely  follows  in  the  wake  of  Dr.  Reid, 
who,  in  order  to  explain  belief  in  testimony,  postu- 
lated two  instincts,  one  of  veracity  and  another  of 
credulity.  What  Dr.  Bain  calls  "  primitive  credu- 
lity "  is  an  instinct  closely  akin  to  the  latter,  but  of 
wider  range.  It  is  an  original  inclination  to  assent 
to  everything  without  suspicion;  an  intuitive  ten- 
dency on  the  side  of  every  uncontradicted  experi- 
ence ;  "  an  initial  believing  impulse  of  the  mind, 
which  errs  on  the  side  of  excess,  and  which,  if 
nothing  has  happened  to  check  it  in  a  particular  case, 
will  be  strong  enough  for  anything."  I  entirely  dis- 
believe in  the  existence  of  any  such  principle.  The 
associationist  school  has  always  prided  itself  on  not 
unduly  multiplying  "  intuitive  tendencies  " ;  and, 
undoubtedly,  to  postulate  such  a  tendency  unneces- 
sarily is  a  serious  mistake.  In  the  present  instance 
the  principle  postulated  ajjpears  to  be  of  a  quite 
unphilosophical  character.  It  may  seem  to  explain 
any  and  every  thing  foolish  in  the  opinions  and  prac- 
tices of  individuals  and  societies,  but  only  to  those 
who  do  not  understand  what  explanation  is.  No 
opinion  or  practice  is  accounted  for  by  merely  attrib- 
uting it  to  credulity.  Clearly  primitive  credulity 
cannot  explain  belief  itself.  Credulity  is  excess  of 
belief,  and  to  explain  belief  by  excess  of  belief  would 
show,  not  that  the  philosopher  who  did  so  was  correct 
in  his  explanation,  but  that  his  initial  believing  im- 
pulse had  lost  none  of  its  primitive  power.  There 
is  no  evidence  of  the  existence  of  a  temporary  in- 
stinct to  believe  everything  in  any  belief  or  credu- 
lousness  with  which  we  are  familiar.    "  We  begin  by 

474 


DE.    BAIN    AND    THE    AUTHOK 

believing  everything;  whatever  is  is  true."  So  says 
Dr.  Bain.  But,  in  fact,  we  begin  by  believing  only  a 
few  things,  and  these  very  simple  and  certain  things, 
— states  of  pleasure  and  pain,  primitive  cravings  and 
obtrusive  impressions  of  sense.  There  is  no  more 
credulity  in  a  child's  belief  of  the  realities  which  first 
affect  its  conscious  life  than  in  a  scientist's  belief  in 
the  results  of  his  investigations.  Nature  takes  charge 
of  our  earliest  education  and  lays  within  us  a  broad 
basis  of  belief  in  truth  before  we  are  brought  into 
contact  with  falsehood.  Even  human  speech  and 
testimony  are,  as  a  rule,  true.  Not  veracity  and 
belief  but  mendacity  and  distrust  call  for  special  ex- 
planation, and  they  find  it  in  the  egoistic  and  evil 
motives  from  which  they  spring  and  the  deceptions 
to  which  these  give  rise.  To  refer  even  belief  to  any 
intuitive  or  instinctive  tendency  is  crude  psychology. 
Of  course  there  is  a  large  amount  of  credulity  and 
false  belief  in  the  world.  Until  people  learn  to  esti- 
mate evidence  aright,  and  acquire  a  sufficient  experi- 
ence of  physical  nature  and  human  nature,  they  must 
often  reason  badly  and  believe  erroneously.  But 
no  intellectual  instinct  or  intuitive  tendency  is  re- 
quired to  account  for'  that.  Savage,  or  so-called 
"  primitive,"  man,  I  must  add,  cannot  fairly  be  cited 
to  prove  "  primitive  credulity,"  seeing  that  suspi- 
ciousness as  well  as  credulousness  is  a  general  charac- 
teristic of  him. 

Fourthly,  Dr.  Bain  argues  that  nothing  can  be  set 
forth  as  belief  which  does  not  implicate,  in  some  way 
or  other,  the  order,  arrangements,  and  sequences  of 
the  universe.     Cognisance  of  the  order  of  nature  or 

475 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

of  the  course  of  the  world  is,  he  holds,  a  necessary 
element  in  belief.  And  that  also  is  a  view  which  I 
do  not  see  my  way  to  accept.  Perhaps  Dr.  Bain  him- 
self is  not  quite  consistent  in  holding  it.  How  is  it 
to  be  harmonised  with  the  view  that  primitive  cre- 
dulity is  a  fundamental  fact  of  belief?  The  credu- 
lousness  which  is  referred  to  an  instinctive  believing 
impulse  appears  to  spring  just  from  the  want  of 
the  cognisance  of  nature  which  is  affirmed  to  be  a 
necessary  element  in  belief.  Were  such  cognisance 
necessarily  an  element  in  belief,  could  primitive 
credulity  be  a  fundamental  fact  in  it?  Would  "  the 
instinctive  tendency  "  and  the  "  necessary  element  " 
placed  in  belief  not  be  conflicting  principles,  one  of 
which  would  eject  the  other?  Indeed  the  view  in 
question  seems  inconsistent  even  with  the  general 
tenor  of  any  philosophy  of  an  empirical  character. 
Cognisance  of  the  order  of  nature  must  surely  be 
only  attainable,  in  accordance  with  empirical  prin- 
ciples, through  a  gradually  acquired  acquaintance 
with  the  facts  and  processes  of  nature.  It  cannot  be 
given  or  implied  as- a  necessary  element  in  a  primor- 
dial mental  fact  like  belief.  To  refer,  as  Dr.  Bain 
does,  to  the  order  of  nature' in  his  theory  of  belief 
would  thus  seem  to  be  an  error  of  the  same  kind  as 
J.  S.  Mill's  well-known  recourse  to  it  in  his  theory  of 
induction.  Further,  and  apart  from  all  considera- 
tions as  to  philosophic  self-consistency,  there  is  a 
very  obvious  and  strong  reason  for  not  regarding 
cognisance  of  the  order  of  nature  as  a  necessary  ele- 
ment of  belief.  It  itself  involves  belief,  and  belief  of 
the  most  comprehensive  kind.     It  is  the  cognisance 

476 


THE    STUDY    OF    BELIEF 

of  a  truth  which  includes  a  multitude  of  general 
truths,  all  of  which  iniplj  a  multitude  of  particular 
experiences,  in  every  one  of  which  belief  is  an  essen- 
tial constituent.  It  is  through  innumerable  particu- 
lar beliefs  that  the  mind  arrives  at  a  conviction  of  the 
order  of  nature.  And  if  cognisance  of  the  order  of 
nature  be  itself  thus  attained,  it  manifestly  cannot  be 
a  necessary  element  in  belief  itself. 

It  is  not  to  be  inferred  from  the  preceding  remarks 
that  cognisance  of  the  order  of  nature  is  a  subject 
which  may  be  safely  neglected  in  the  study  of  belief. 
It  has  manifestly  a  close  and  important  connection 
with  belief.  It  is  to  a  large  extent  a  test  of  the 
value  of  beliefs:  once  attained,  it  cannot  fail  to  be 
applied  as  a  criterion  of  their  credibility.  So  long 
as  there  is  no  clear,  steady,  and  truthful  conception 
of  the  order  of  nature  men  cannot  fail  to  fall  in  con 
sequence  into  manifold  errors  and  delusions.  The 
characteristics  which  distinguish  medieval  from  mod- 
ern thought,  faith,  and  practice  are  all  more  or  less 
traceable  to  differences  in  the  conceptions  of  nature 
predominant  in  medieval  and  modem  times,  ^o  one 
can  readily  believe  what  seems  to  him  inconsistent 
with  his  general  view  of  the  world. 

Fifthly,  belief  and  disbelief  are,  according  to  Dr. 
Bain,  as  mental  attitudes  the  same,  the  true  opposite 
of  both  being  doubt.  This  view,  however,  I  do  not 
require  to  comment  on,  having  had  occasion  in  a 
former  chapter  to  maintain  that  the  only  opposite  to 
belief  is  non-belief  (the  absence  of  belief),  just  as 
the  only  opposite  to  knowledge  is  ignorance  (nesci- 
ence), and  that  doubt  differs  from  belief  and  disbe- 
lief only  in  complexity  and  degree. 

477 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

II.    THE    SPHERE    OF    BELIEF 

The  most  distinctive  characteristic  of  belief  is  that 
it  relates  in  all  its  forms  and  degrees  to  truth  and 
knowledge.  These  are  what  it  is  concerned  with,  and 
it  assumes  that  truth  is,  and  that  knowledge  is  more 
or  less  attained  or  attainable.  Whatever  we  believe 
we  believe  to  be  true,  and  to  be  known  by  us,  in  the 
measure  of  our  belief  of  it,  as  true.  Whatever  we 
disbelieve  we  believe  not  to  be  true,  and  that  we 
know  it,  in  the  measure  of  our  disbelief  of  it,  not  to 
be  true.  Whenever  we  doubt,  it  is  in  the  belief  that 
our  knowledge  is  insufficient  to  warrant  a  firm  con- 
viction either  as  to  the  truth  or  the  falsity  of  what 
we  doubt.  This  distinctive  trait  of  belief  entitles  us 
to  regard  disbelief  and  doubt  as  forms  of  belief, 
and  to  include  them  under  the  term  belief  when 
we  require  to  employ  it  in  its  widest  or  generic 
sense. 

It  should  also  determine  the  place  and  function  to 
be  assigned  to  belief  among  mental  phenomena.  It 
shows  that  it  properly  belongs  to  the  intellect  as 
distinguished  from  feeling  or  sentiment  and  from 
will  or  conation;  and  in  the  intellect  to  judgment  as 
distinguished  from  conception  and  imagination.  Men 
often  believe  error,  but  only  when  they  judge  that 
they  have  reason  to  believe  it  to  be  truth.  Belief 
has  always  judgment  for  its  antecedent  and  founda- 
tion. Judgment  is  just  the  intellect  exercised  about 
knowledge  and  truth;  and  belief  is  just  acquiescence 
in  the  results  of  its  activity.  There  is  nothing  in 
intelligence  more  essential  than  judgment  thus  un- 

478 


THE    SPHERE    OF    BELIEF 

derstood,  for  through  it,  or  rather  in  the  form  of  it, 
and  of  it  only,  is  the  mind  capable  of  apprehending, 
or  even  supposing  that  it  apprehends,  either  reality 
or  relationship.  It  is  present  in  all  self-consciousness, 
in  all  perceptions  of  sense,  in  all  intuitions  and  infer- 
ences, in  all  analysis  and  in  all  synthesis,  in  all  esti- 
mates of  probability  and  in  all  convictions  of  certi- 
tude; and  wherever  judgment  thus  understood  is, 
there  belief  also  is. 

The  sphere  of  belief  corresponds  to  the  nature  of 
belief.  Hence  belief  is  co-extensive  with  true  and 
erroneous  judgment,  with  real  and  imagined  knowl- 
edge. Whatever  a  man  judges  to  be  true  he  also 
believes  to  be  true.  But  belief  is  as  inseparable  from 
false  as  from  true  judgment.  The  difference  between 
a  true  and  a  false  judgment  is  not  that  the  former 
is  and  the  latter  is  not  believed,  but  that  the  former 
is  believed  to  be  what  it  really  is,  namely,  true,  while 
the  latter  is  believed  to  be  true  although  really  false. 
Wherever  there  is  error  there  is  belief.  Further, 
belief  is  necessarily  co-extensive  with  real  and  imag- 
ined knowledge,  as  both  of  these  are  composed  of 
judgments.  Whatever  any  man  knows  he  believes; 
and  there  is  neither  separation  nor  conflict  possible 
between  his  knowledge  and  the  belief  which  accom- 
panies it.  The  terms  know  and  believe  are  often 
indeed  opposed.  Certain  things  are  said  to  be  not 
merely  believed  but  hnoiun,  and  others  to  be  not 
known  but  only  believed.  In  all  such  cases,  however, 
know  implies  full  assurance,  and  believe  denotes  more 
or  less  of  dubiety.  Of  course,  belief  extends  far  be- 
yond the  limits  of  knowledge.     It  includes  a  great 

479 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

deal  that  is  false,  and  there  is  no  false  knowledge; 
there  is  only  "  knowledge  falsely  so  called,"  what  is 
erroneously  believed  to  be  knowledge. 

What  has  been  said  may  suffice  to  indicate  the 
actual  sphere  of  belief.  It  also  suggests  what  is  its 
proi:>er  or  legitimate  sphere.  Belief  should  he  co- 
extensive with  knowledge,  coincident  with  truth. 
Actually  it  is  far  more  extensive  than  knowledge, 
and  coincides  largely  with  error  and  not  with  truth. 
But  so  far  as  it  does  so  it  is  a  defect  or  malady  of 
mind.  To  believe  a  lie  or  illusion  is  an  evil  and 
misfortune.  The  worth  of  belief  depends  mainly  on 
the  truth  and  value  of  its  content,  on  the  reality 
and  excellency  of  its  objects.  Belief  is  assent  to 
what  is  regarded  as  true,  and  can  have  no  rightful 
place  in  the  mind  unless  true.  Faith  is  from  its 
very  nature  boimd  to  give  reasons  for  its  existence, 
and,  of  course,  its  reasons  ought  to  be  good.  The 
entire  province  of  belief  belongs  of  right  to  the 
realm  of  truth.  Hence  a  most  important  part  of 
the  self-discipline  incumbent  on  men  is  that  of  en- 
deavouring to  conform  all  their  beliefs,  disbeliefs, 
and  doubts  to  the  findings  of  sound  judgment;  of 
striving  after  a  complete  reasonableness  of  faith  as 
well  as  of  conduct;  of  having  constant  regard  in  the 
formation  of  their  convictions  to  all  available  and 
appropriate  evidence.  It  is  wrong  to  believe  without 
evidence,  or  without  due  consideration  of  the  amount 
and  weight  of  evidence,  and  still  worse  to  believe 
against  evidence.  A  rightly  regulated  mind  is  one  in 
which   evidence   is   the   measure   of   assent;   or,    in 

480     ' 


THE    NATUKE    OF    BELIEF 

other  words,  in  which  assent  is  proportional  to  evi- 
dence. 

This  truth  is  of  immense  practical  moment.  Pres- 
ident Thornwell  did  not  in  the  least  exaggerate,  1 
think,  when  he  wrote  thus :  "  There  is  no  principle 
which  needs  to  be  more  strenuously  inculcated,  than 
that  evidence  alone  should  be  the  measure  of  assent. 
In  reference  to  this  principle,  the  whole  discipline  of 
the  understanding  must  be  conducted.  Our  anxiety 
should  be  to  guard  against  all  the  influences  which 
preclude  the  access  of  evidence,  incapacitate  us  to 
appreciate  its  value,  and  give  false  measures  of  judg- 
ment, instead  of  the  natural  and  legitimate  limits  of 
belief.  All  real  evidence  we  are  bound  to  receive,  ac- 
cording to  the  weight  which  it  would  have,  in  a 
sound  and  healthful  condition  of  soul."  ^  The  truth 
thus  inculcated  by  the  eminent  American  divine  is 
substantially  identical  with  the  principle,  "  as  much 
ethical  as  intellectual,"  which  Prof.  Huxley  held  to 
be  "  all  that  is  essential  to  agnosticism," — the  prin- 
ciple "  that  it  is  wrong  for  a  man  to  say  he  is  certain 
of  the  objective  truth  of  any  proposition  unless  he  can 
produce  evidence  which  logically  justifies  that  cer- 
tainty." ^  Clifford  has  fervently  argued  for  the  same 
principle  in  his  articles  on  The  Ethics  of  Belief  and 
The  Ethics  of  Beligion,^  and  also  under  the  illusion 
of  its  being  distinctively  agnostic.  In  reality  agnosti- 
cism has  not  the  least  claim  to  any  peculiar  or  exclu- 
sive right  to  it.  The  principle  in  question  is  simply 
the  principle  of  intellectual  honesty.     It  is  observed 

•  Discourses  on  Truth,  ^.  123.      Carter,  New  York,  1855. 
*  Collected  Essays^  vol.  v.  p.  ;?10  ff.         ^Lectures  and  Essays. 

481 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

in  the  ordinary  affairs  of  life  just  in  proportion  to 
the  good  sense  and  fair-mindedness  of  those  who  con- 
duct them ;  has  been  exemplified  in  all  successful  his- 
torical and  scientific  research;  and  ought  equally  to 
be  conformed  to  in  religious  life  and  inquiry.  Chris- 
tianity assumed  and  enjoined  it  from  the  first,  and 
long  before  it  received  recognition  as  the  fundamental 
condition  of  true  scientific  method.  It  may  be  that 
it  is  now  more  faithfully  and  fully  acted  on  in 
modern  positive  science  than  elsewhere.  If  so,  such 
science  may  fairly  claim  to  be  in  that  respect  excep- 
tionally Christian,  but  should,  most  certainly,  not 
pretend  to  be  thereby  distinguished  from  or  opposed 
to  Christianity. 

l^othing,  then,  is  to  be  received  as  true  without 
sufficient  evidence.  The  great  and  all-comprehensive 
duty  of  man  as  to  belief  is  to  believe  and  disbelieve 
according  to  evidence,  and  neither  to  believe  nor  dis- 
believe when  evidence  fails  him.  As  Clifford  says, 
"  It  is  wrong  in  all  cases  to  believe  on  insufficient  evi- 
dence ;  and  where  it  is  presumption  to  doubt  and  in- 
vestigate, then  it  is  worse  than  presumption  to  be- 
lieve." ^ 

When  we  say  so,  however,  what  are  we  to  under- 
stand by  "  sufficient  evidence  "  ?  Obviously  not  only 
evidence  which  will  produce  or  warrant  an  absolute 
or  metaphysical  certainty.  Such  evidence  if  attaina- 
ble would,  indeed,  be  amply  sufficient,  but  it  is  rarely, 
if  ever,  attainable.  It  is  possible  to  raise  a  theoretical 
doubt  as  to  any  truth.  Clifford  himself  has  shown 
us  how  we  may  question  the  assumptions  of  Euclidean 
*  Lectures,  &c.,  vol.  ii.  p.  211. 
483 


CLIFFORD   JUSTIFIED 

geometry  and  the  universal  statements  of  arithmetic. 
Seemingly  only  omniscience  can  be  infallible  as  to 
anything. 

Xor  need  sufficient  evidence  be  scientific  evidence. 
The  statement  of  Clifford  just  quoted  has  been  repre- 
sented as  equivalent  to  the  assertion  that  "  no  man 
ought  to  believe  in  the  doctrine  of  universal  gravita- 
tion till  he  has  read  carefully  through  the  '  Prin- 
cipia,'  and  mastered  the  steps  of  the  demonstration."^ 
Of  course,  it  does  not  mean  anything  so  absurd. 
Clifford  clearly  explained  that  it  was  not  so  meant, 
and  that  in  many  cases  we  are  fully  justified  in  be- 
lieving even  scientific  truths  on  authority.  Enough 
of  evidence  may  be  presented  in  twenty  pages  of  an 
elementary  text-book  of  physics  to  enable  a  schoolboy, 
quite  incapable  of  understanding  the  "  Principia," 
intelligently  to  apprehend  and  accept  Newton's  law. 
And  still  less  evidence  may  be  sufficient  to  warrant 
such  faith  in  it  as  is  possessed  by  multitudes  who 
have  never  been  taught  even  the  simplest  rudiments 
of  physics.  Parents  who  conscientiously  tell  their 
children  as  true  only  what  they  themselves  really 
know  to  be  true  may  reasonably  expect  to  be  believed 
on  their  mere  word,  for  in  that  case  their  word  is,  as 
a  rule,  a  sufficient  reason  for  belief,  and  the  accept- 
ance of  it  an  intellectual  and  moral  l)enefit. 

When  scientific  knowledge  is  needed  the  common 
man  must  be  content  to  be  guided  by  scientific  ex- 
perts. In  ordinary  affairs  scientific  evidence  is  rarely 
to  be  had,  and  we  must  depend  on  such  evidence  as 
is  available.  And  that  may  be  neither  very  good  nor 
'P.  Strutt,  The  Nature  of  Faith,  p.  46. 
483 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

very  abundant.  We  are  often  bound  to  act  on  slight 
and  weak  evidence.  To  beings  with  our  limited  ca- 
pacities probability,  as  Butler  says,  is  "  the  very 
guide  of  life."  Hence  we  must  beware  of  despising 
any  kind  of  evidence  which  is  good,  and  must  willing- 
ly accept  all  evidence  to  the  whole  extent  that  it  is 
good.  The  best  measure  of  a  man's  love  of  truth  is 
to  be  found  in  the  extent  of  his  anxiety  to  appreciate 
aright  even  the  lowest  degrees  of  evidence. 

Evidence  which  leaves  us  quite  uncertain  as  to 
whether  or  not  our  action  will  be  successful  may  be 
amply  sufficient  to  show  us  that  action  is  the  part  of 
wisdom  and  of  duty.  We  are  often  morally  and  pni- 
dentially  bound  to  act  where  the  chances  of  failure 
far  exceed  those  of  achievement.  But  no  cases  of  this 
kind  can  be  rationally  regarded  as  exceptions  to  the 
law  that  belief,  and  action  on  belief,  ought  to  be  in 
accordance  with  reason  and  evidence.  That  law  re- 
quires a  preponderance  of  reason  in  favour  of  action 
as  against  inaction,  but  not  a  preponderance  of 
chances  of  success  over  chances  of  failure  in  action. 
The  bare  possibility  of  success  may  be  a  sufficient  rea- 
son for  the  most  strenuous  and  painful  exertion,  when 
the  probability  of  success  is  infinitesimally  small  and 
failure  seems  almost  inevitable. 

Manifestly  also  we  have  no  right  in  any  case  to 
determine  whether  the  evidence  adduced  for  belief 
be  sufficient  or  not  without  an  actual  examination  of 
it  with  reference  to  the  conditions  and  peculiarities 
of  the  case  in  question ;  no  right  to  prejudge  any  kind 
of  evidence  in  an  a  p'iori  manner,  or  to  excuse  our- 
selves from  taking  it  fully  and  fairly  into  account  on 

484 


SPHEEE    OF    BELIEF 

a  merely  general  plea  that  it  is  insufficient.  Every 
such  plea  itself  needs  proof,  and  can  only  be  proven 
through  a  conscientious  weighing  and  sifting  of  the 
•very  evidence  on  which  suspicion  or  condemnation  is 
prematurely  and  unfairly  cast.  This  is  a  rule  with- 
out exception,  and  disregard  of  it  necessarily  implies 
more  or  less  of  intellectual  dishonesty.  Probably  it 
is  one  nowhere  so  frequently  disregarded  as  in  the 
sphere  of  religion.  The  tendencies  leading  men,  in- 
stead of  carefully  endeavouring  to  determine  the  real 
value  of  what  presents  itself  as  evidence,  hastily  to 
assume  and  assert  it  to  be  insufficient  are  there  often 
especially  strong.  On  the  other  hand,  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted that  nowhere  else  is  insufficient  evidence  more 
apt  to  be  rashly  pronounced  ample  and  conclusive. 

We  hold,  then,  that  man  is  never  free  to  believe 
against  evidence,  or  without  evidence,  or  otherwise 
than  with  due  regard  to  the  quality,  weight,  and  rel- 
evancy of  evidence.  And  yet  we  reject  any  merely 
evidentialist  or  intellectualist  theory  of  the  origin  or 
nature  of  belief.  Belief  obviously  owes  its  peculiar 
character,  as  well  as  its  peculiar  power  and  impor- 
tance, largely  to  its  central  position  in  human  nature 
and  its  intimate  affinities  with  all  that  is  constitutive 
of  that  nature.  It  connects  the  intellectual,  emotion- 
al, and  volitional  capabilities  and  attributes  of  the 
spirit  by  firmer  and  subtler  ties  than  any  other  men- 
tal state  or  condition.  It  is  so  conjoined,  not  only 
with  perception,  judgment,  and  reasoning,  but  also 
with  imagination,  feeling,  desire,  and  will,  in  their 
multifarious  phases  and  expressions,  as  to  be  influ- 
enced by  all  and  operative  in  and  through  all.    Hence 

485 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

every  man  is  very  much  what  his  belief  is,  and  his 
belief  very  much  what  he  is.  And  yet  there  is  in  this, 
as  we  shall  afterwards  see,  nothing  inconsistent  with 
evidence  being  the  legitimate  rule  or  criterion  of 
belief. 

Nor  does  the  reasonableness  of  the  conformity  of 
belief  to  evidence  imply  that  belief,  and  the  life  of 
feeling  and  action  founded  on  belief,  should  be  affect- 
ed merely  by  the  strength  and  clearness  of  the  appre- 
hension of  evidence.  They  naturally  Avill,  and  even 
manifestly  ought,  to  be  affected  also  by  the  character 
of  the  object  or  content  of  belief.  All  belief  is  not 
the  same  belief  nor  of  the  same  value.  Many  true  and 
attainable  beliefs  are  not  worth  our  seeking  after,  or 
troubling  ourselves  as  to  what  evidence  there  may  be 
for  them.  Beliefs  as  to  morals  have  claims  upon  us 
which  beliefs  as  to  lower  concerns  have  not,  and  de- 
mand from  us  more  anxious  inquiry  as  to  whether 
they  are  true  or  false.  Belief  in  God  should  natu- 
rally so  affect  a  man's  whole  view  of  the  world  and 
history,  and  so  influence  his  whole  life  and  conduct, 
and  has  also  such  immense  significance  for  societies 
and  nations,  that  a  refusal  to  study  the  grounds  of  it 
with  the  utmost  care  and  earnestness  can  only  be  re- 
garded as  inexcusable. 

III.    CHEISTIAN    FAITH    IN    RELATION    TO    BELIEF 

Inasmuch  as  religious  belief  is  a  kind  of  belief  and 
Christian  faith  a  form  of  religious  belief,  all  that  has 
been  affirmed  of  belief  in  the  foregoing  observations 
must,  if  true  at  all,  hold  good  of  religious  belief  and 
of  Christian  faith.     All  that  is  true  of  the  universal 

486 


BELIEF    AND    CHRISTIAN    FAITH 

(belief)  must  be  true  of  the  special  (religious  belief) 
and  of  the  particular  (Christian  faith).  Hence  since 
all  belief  ought  to  rest  on  evidence,  and  can  only 
justify  its  existence  by  reasons,  religious  belief  is 
bound  so  to  justify  itself,  and  Christian  faith  is 
under  the  same  obligation. 

But  the  converse  does  not  hold  good.  Religious 
belief  is  not  mere  belief :  it  has  a  distinctive  character 
of  its  own,  and  the  reasons  which  justify  it  must  be 
of  a  special  kind  and  appropriate  to  its  nature, — not 
the  reasons  for  any  sort  of  non-religious  belief.  As  a 
religious  phenomenon  it  must  have  a  religious  ex- 
planation ;  as  a  spiritual  fact  it  must  be  grounded  on 
spiritual  truth.  To  demand  of  it  to  produce  mathe- 
matical, physical,  or  historical  reasons,  or  to  submit 
to  be  tested  by  mathematical,  physical,  or  historical 
criteria,  would  be  absurd. 

Xot  otherwise  is  it  with  regard  to  Christian  faith. 
That  implies  still  more  that  is  not  to  be  found  in  mere 
belief  than  does  simple  religious  belief.  It  is  not 
mere  belief,  nor  mere  belief  in  religious  truth,  nor 
even  mere  belief  in  Christian  truth.  It  is  a  self-sur- 
rendering acceptance  of  Christ  as  of  God  made  wis- 
dom, righteousness,  sanctification,  and  redemption 
unto  us;  a  supreme  trust  in  Christ  based  on  a  dis- 
tinctive conviction  as  to  His  character  and  His  rela- 
tionship alike  to  God  and  man.  Mere  belief  is,  in- 
deed, sometimes  spoken  of  in  the  Xew  Testament  by 
the  same  name  as  faith,  but  it  is  always  in  such  cases 
so  spoken  of  as  to  indicate  that  it  is  not  the  faith 
which  the  Gosix^l  demands  but  a  dead  and  unprofita- 
ble faith,  such  as  even  the  most  wicked  of  beings  may 

487 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

have.  Faith  in  its  distinctively  Christian  sense  im- 
plies the  action  of  all  the  fundamental  ix)\vers  and  af- 
fections of  the  human  spirit.  It  contains  in  germ  the 
whole  Christian  life,  heing  a  turning  away  from 
darkness  to  light,  from  sin  to  righteousness,  from  self 
to  God  manifested  in  and  through  Christ. 

Christian  faith  when  true  to  its  proper  nature  is 
religious  belief  at  its  highest  and  best :  the  final  and 
perfect  form  of  belief.  All  religion  presupposes  and 
proceeds  from  belief.  In  the  ruder  forms  of  religion, 
however,  belief  is,  for  the  most  part,  capricious  and 
gregarious,  unreflecting  and  unquestioning,  ^o  ex- 
press demand  for  it  is  needed,  as  no  one  thinks  of  test- 
ing current  beliefs  by  private  judgment.  When  such 
a  demand  for  it  is  made,  religious  doubt  or  disbelief 
has  already  arisen.  It  is  only  in  religions  which  find 
themselves  suspected  or  opposed,  and  feel  the  need  of 
overcoming  distrust  and  antagonism,  that  stress  is 
laid  on  belief  and  reasons  for  it  urged.  Brahmanism, 
Buddhism,  Zoroastrianism,  and  Mohammedanism  are 
examples  of  ethnic  religions  of  this  kind.  In  the 
Vedic  hymns,  the  Epic  poems,  the  Puranas,  the  Tan- 
tras,  &c.,  of  Hinduism  faith  is  highly  lauded.  It  is 
explicitly  appealed  to  and  enjoined  in  various  con- 
nections, yet  rarely,  if  ever,  in  a  truly  reasonable 
way ;  and  nowhere  has  the  doctrine  of  "  justification 
by  faith  "  been  so  monstrously  perverted  to  immoral 
ends  as  in  Hinduism.  Buddhism  has  often  been  de- 
scribed as  not  taking  faith  into  account  at  all;  but 
that  is  an  incorrect  account.  AATiat  is  true  is  that  in 
Buddhism  faith  is  not  regarded  as  a  separate  princi- 
ple but  identified  with  knowledge,  so  that  right  beliefs 

488 


ETHNIC    EELIGIONS 

are  merely  correct  views.  Original  Buddhism  was 
essentially  an  ethical  rationalism  incapable  of  laying 
hold  of  the  ordinary  human  heart.  It  had  almost 
nothing  in  common  with  popular  Buddhism,  in  which 
faith  shows  itself  as  almost  entirely  divorced  from 
rational  and  moral  law,  and  in  most  extravagant  and 
degrading  practices.  Zoroastrianism,  dualistic  al- 
though it  was,  did  more  justice  to  faith  than  either 
Brahmanism  or  Buddhism,  but  as  dualistic  it  could 
not  ix)ssibly  do  full  justice  to  it.  A  true  monotheism 
can  alone  elicit  all  the  powers  of  a  complete  faith. 
Mohammedanism  was  a  direct  creation  of  faith  and 
a  marvellous  exemplification  of  its  might.  The  whole 
Mohammedan  world  may  justly  be  said  to  rest  on 
confidence  in  the  divine  mission  of  its  founder.  The 
extraordinary  rapidity  with  which  Mohammedanism 
spread  was  chiefly  due,  indeed,  to  its  free  and  unspar- 
ing use  of  the  sword;  but  it  was  faith  which  seized 
and  yielded  the  sword.  Mohammedan  like  Zoroas- 
trian  faith  is  not  mere  belief,  mere  assent,  or  mere 
conformity  of  conviction  with  reality,  but  inclusive 
of  the  central  energies  of  the  spirit.  It  is  required  to 
produce  appropriate  fruits,  possess  the  whole  heart, 
and  regulate  the  whole  life.  It  is  "  the  entire  sur- 
render of  the  will  to  God  "  (Islam),  and  "  those  who 
have  surrendered  themselves "  (Mussulmen)  are 
"  the  believers  "  as  opposed  to  "  the  rejectors  "  (Kaf- 
firs). But  it  implies  a  very  defective  conception  of 
God, — an  idea  of  Him  in  which  righteousness  and 
love  are  sacrificed  to  power  and  authority.  Hence  it 
is  not  truly  and  fully  moral ;  not  the  surrender  of  en- 
lightened, free,  and  affectionate  service  of  absolute 

489 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

goodness,  but  of  servile  submission  to  arbitrary  om- 
nipotence. Hence,  admirable  although  Mohammedan' 
faith  be  in  certain  respects,  it  can  by  no  means  satisfy 
the  intellectual,  emotional,  or  moral  requirements  of 
man,  and  is  far  from  rightly  related  to  evidence,  or 
affection,  or  duty. 

The  term  "  faith  "  hardly  occurs  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. Yet  its  importance  as  a  condition  of  piety  is 
much  more  adequately  recognised  there  than  in  the 
Koran,  although  for  the  most  part  rather  implicitly 
than  explicitly,  rather  through  historical  examples 
than  doctrinal  statements.  The  faith  which  animates 
the  Christian  is,  as  the  author  of  the  Epistle  to  the 
Hebrews  has  so  strikingly  shown,  substantially  the 
same  principle  as  that  through  which  the  patriarchs 
and  prophets,  saints  and  heroes,  of  the  ancient  dis- 
pensation gained  their  spiritual  victories  and  secured 
the  Divine  approval.  But  what  is  merely  implied 
and  latent  in  the  Old  Testament  is  clearly  expressed 
and  definitely  evolved  in  the  New.  In  Christianity 
alone  has  faith  had  its  proper  nature  and  significance 
as  a  religious  principle  fully  disclosed.  Its  predomi- 
nant form  is  no  longer,  as  under  the  old  dispensation, 
the  fear  of  the  Lord,  but  tj'ust  in  a  Heavenly  Father. 
It  retains  the  awe  and  reverence  but  none  of  the  ser- 
vile fear  of  the  ancient  faith;  it  works  especially 
by  love,  moves  the  whole  nature,  and  aims  at 
moral  perfection,  likeness  to  Christ,  its  distinctive 
object. 

Christian  faith  is,  therefore,  far  more  than  mere 
belief,  or  even  mere  religious  belief,  and  much  which 
is  true  of  it  is  true  only  of  itself.    Yet  it  is  belief,  and 

490 


CHRISTIAN    FAITH 

belief  of  a  distinctively  religious  kind,  and  what  is 
true  of  that  belief  is  true  of  it.  Like  all  other  belief 
it  ought  to  be  in  accordance  with  reason  and  con- 
formed to  evidence;  ought  to  be  preceded  by  ade- 
quate consideration  and  rest  on  sane  judgment.  The 
justice  of  this  requirement  is  everywhere  presupposed 
and  often  and  clearly  expressed  in  the  Christian 
Scriptures.  A  blind  faith  is  not  a  Christian  faith. 
The  latter  is  essentially  a  turning  in  mind,  heart,  and 
will  from  darkness  to  light, — the  seeking  and  follow- 
ing of  light.  And  accordingly  it  claims  to  be  war- 
ranted by  abundant  evidence,  and,  alike  as  conviction 
and  as  self-surrender,  has  reasons  which  it  is  not 
afraid  to  present  as  conclusive.  It  neither  sanctions 
nor  allows  of  any  divorce  between  itself  and  the  en- 
lightened understanding.  One  of  its  most  prominent 
and  distinctive  characteristics  is  its  continuous  and 
comprehensive  appeal  to  evidence.  Yet  it  is  no  mere 
belief  or  simple  historical  faith,  but  a  supreme  trust 
or  reliance  based  on  the  self -revelation  of  God  which 
centres  in  Christ.  Christian  faith  is  a  unique  self- 
surrendering  acceptance  of  Christ  as  made  of  God 
unto  us  wisdom,  righteousness,  sanctification,  and  re- 
demption. Sometimes,  indeed,  mere  belief  is  spoken 
of  in  the  New  Testament  by  the  same  name  as  faith, 
but  it  is  then  always  suiRciently  indicated  to  be  not 
the  faith  which  the  Gospel  demands,  but  a  dead  faith, 
an  unprofitable  faith,  a  faith  which  the  most  wicked 
may  have.  Faith  in  its  distinctively  Christian  sense 
implies  the  action  of  all  the  fundamental  powers  and 
affections  of  the  human  spirit;  can  have  no  being 
without  love  and  good  works;  and  contains  in  germ 

491 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOTJS  BELIEF 

the  whole  Christian  life,  being  a  turning  away  from 
darkness  to  light,  from  sin  to  righteousness,  from 
self  to  God. 

IV.     WHY    BELIEF    AS    TO     RELIGION     IS    SO     OFTEN 
FALSE 

Many  questions  connected  with  belief  might  be  rel- 
evantly treated  of  in  relation  to  agnosticism,  but  my 
space  allows  me  to  deal  in  this  chapter  with  only  one 
— viz.,  the  question.  What  is  involved  in  the  fact  that 
belief  is  to  so  great  an  extent,  as  it  obviously  is,  false  ? 
In  dealing  with  it  I  shall  have  regard  specially  to  re- 
ligious belief,  although  all  other  belief  is  liable  to  be 
more  or  less  vitiated  in  the  same  way. 

It  is  unnecessary  to  spend  time  in  proving  the  fact 
from  which  we  are  to  start.  The  slightest  survey  of 
the  systems  of  belief  which  rule  the  world  is  sufficient 
to  show  that  they  are  largely  self-contradictory,  in- 
consistent with  one  another,  insufficiently  supported 
by  evidence,  and  irreconcilable  with  the  dictates  of 
enlightened  reason  and  conscience.  It  is  especially 
manifest  that  there  is  an  enormous,  depressing,  per- 
plexing amount  of  false  religious  belief  in  the  world. 
About  230  millions  of  human  creatures,  or  16  per 
cent,  of  mankind,  are  reckoned  still  to  adhere  to  relig- 
ions in  which  only  savages  can  believe,  and  which  so 
long  as  they  are  believed  in  must  keep  their  votaries 
savages.  Several  hundreds  of  millions  of  our  race 
are  vaguely  termed  Brahminists  or  Buddhists.  The 
believers  in  Mohammed  are  probably  not  less  than 
120  millions.  Israelites  may  be  set  down  as  about 
8  millions.      Christians  are  estimated  as  about  430 

492 


RELIGIOUS    BELIEF    LARGELY    FALSE 

millions,  of  which  over  210  millions  are  Roman  Cath- 
olics, over  120  millions  Protestants,  over  80  millions 
adherents  of  the  Greek  Church,  and  some  10  millions 
belong  to  various  comparatively  small  sects.  The 
number  of  disbelievers  in  the  existence  of  any  relig- 
ious truth  cannot  be  even  approximately  estimated, 
but  must  be  large.  All  that  implies  an  enormous  ex- 
tent and  amount  of  false  belief  of  a  very  serious 
kind.  If  any  of  the  systems  referred  to  be  even  in 
the  main  true,  all  the  others  must  be  in  a  great  meas- 
ure false.  The  differences  between  even  Roman 
Catholicism  and  Protestantism  cannot  reasonably  be 
deemed  of  slight,  importance.  If  the  Pope  be  infalli- 
ble, if  transubstantiation  be  true,  if  out  of  commun- 
ion with  the  Church  of  Rome  there  is  no  salvation, 
Protestants  and  all  non-Catholics  must  be  most  se- 
riously in  error;  if  those  propositions  are  not  true, 
all  Catholics  must  be  as  seriously  in  error. 

Belief  as  to  religion,  then,  is  to  a  vast  extent  false. 
Why  is  it  so  ?  IIow  are  we  to  account  for  a  fact  at 
once  so  undeniable  and  so  perplexing  ?  It  is  not  par- 
ticularly difficult  to  account  for,  owing  to  the  develop- 
ment of  belief  being  a  strictly  historical  phenomenon 
produced  by  forces  which  can  all  be  studied  in  opera- 
tion by  attentive  observers.  Its  explanation  is  in 
general  terms  just  this: — Belief  is  produced  and 
modified  by  a  great  variety  of  causes,  many  of  which 
are  not  valid  reasons  for  belief.  Belief  should  be  al- 
ways in  conformity  with  knowledge,  but  other  things 
than  knowledge — authority,  self-interest,  passion, 
eloquence,  flattery,  association,  imagination,  preju- 
dices of  all  kinds — often  give  rise  to  belief,  and  so  be- 

493 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

lief  is  often  contrary  to  knowledge.  Belief  can  only 
justify  itself  by  evidence,  but  it  frequently  owes  its 
origin  to  quite  other  causes,  and  can  give  no  proper 
justification  of  itself.  Good  reasons  for  belief  ought 
to  be  the  causes  of  belief,  but  the  real  causes  of  belief 
are  in  many  cases  not  good  reasons  for  it.  The  ra- 
tional grounds  of  belief  must  not  be  confounded  with 
its  actual  causes. 

The  causes  which  mould  and  modify  man's  beliefs 
are  not  only  numerous  but  vary  in  the  measure  and 
mode  of  their  influence  according  to  their  relations  to 
one  another,  and  especially  according  to  the  mental 
condition  of  those  on  whom  they  act.  They  often  de- 
termine belief,  but  they  do  not  always  or  necessarily 
determine  it.  They  produce  and  modify  it  in  certain 
circumstances  when  they  would  not  do  so  in  other 
circumstances.  They  make  certain  jjersons  believe 
so  and  so,  but  would  have  no  such  effect  on  others. 
They  influence  injuriously  the  ignorant,  say,  but  not 
the  cultured,  the  fanciful  but  not  the  intelligent,  the 
prejudiced  but  not  the  unprejudiced,  and  so  on.  The 
less  experienced,  morally  refined,  and  intellectually 
cultured  a  |3eople  is,  the  more  easily  are  its  beliefs 
affected  by  causes  which  are  not  reasons,  or  are  inade- 
quate reasons. 

The  following  are  some  of  the  chief  causes  which 
so  act  upon  belief,  and  especially  ujx>n  religious  be- 
lief, as  to  account  for  its  being  largely  false : — 

(a)  The  most  general  glance  over  the  religions  of 
the  world  is  enough  to  show  that  the  beliefs  of  men 
have  been  largely  affected  by  their  surroundings — by 
the  powers  and  aspects  of  nature,  geographical  condi- 

494 


SOME    CAUSES    THEREOF 

tions,  local  peculiarities,  &c.  Causes  of  this  kind 
have  had  an  exaggerated  influence  attributed  to  them 
by  various  writers,  yet  there  can  be  no  reasonable 
doubt  that  they  have  had  a  very  real  influence, — 
some  direct  influence  and  a  very  great  amount  of  in- 
direct influence.  The  faiths  of  the  world  still  reflect 
more  or  less  the  features  of  the  skies  under  which 
and  of  the  lands  on  which  they  arose. 

(b)  The  genius  and  dispositions  of  the  various 
races  and  communities  of  men  equally  affect  the  char- 
acter of  their  beliefs.  Racial,  tribal,  and  national  pe- 
culiarities are  not  indeed  original  causes  of  divergent 
religious  convictions.  They  have  themselves  been 
produced;  but  once  formed  they  are. real  causes,  and 
persistent  causes.  The  different  races  and  families 
of  mankind,  where  polytheists,  have  gods  which  differ 
very  much  as  they  themselves  do.  Even  when  various 
peoples  acknowledge  one  and  the  same  religion,  that 
religion  is  modified  in  its  beliefs  as  in  its  institutions 
by  each  of  them  in  conformity  with  their  own  genius. 
It  has  been  thus  with  Buddhism ;  thus  with  Moham- 
medanism ;  thus  with  Christianity. 

(c)  The  social  medium  has  an  immense  influence 
on  belief.  Belief  is  a  highly  contagious  thing.  In 
certain  states  of  society,  in  certain  dispositions  of  the 
mind  of  a  community,  belief  spreads  with  very  little 
aid  from  reason,  with  scarcely  more  than  the  sem- 
blance of  an  appeal  to  reason ;  spreads  almost  entirely 
through  fellow-feeling,  sympathy,  emotional  excite- 
ment, example,  imitation,  fashion ;  and  hence  seizes 
and  subjugates  minds  almost  as  quickly,  and  almost 
as  independently  of  rational  reflection,  as  the  epidem- 

495 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  KELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

ics  which  from  time  to  time  lay  hold  of  and  master 
our  bodies. 

(d)  The  influence  of  the  social  medium  in  the  de- 
termination of  belief  may  be  explained  to  a  large  ex- 
tent by  the  power  of  the  association  of  ideas  and  by 
the  habits  of  thought  which  it  generates.  And  these 
also  of  themselves  greatly  affect  belief.  Opinions 
may  be  easily  formed  in  various  ways  without  good 
reason,  but  once  formed  in  any  way  they  are  very 
diificult  to  be  dispelled  by  the  most  cogent  reasons. 
The  beliefs  formed  in  early  youth,  for  example,  al- 
though resting  it  may  be  on  the  weakest  grounds  and 
the  most  illusory  impressions,  are  apt  to  become,  sim- 
ply in  virtue  of-  priority  of  possession  and  length  of 
tenure,  principles  which  we  deem  too  certain  to  re- 
quire testing,  too  sacred  to  run  any  risk  of  unsettling, 
and  by  which  we  judge  of  all  views  and  reasonings 
afterwards  submitted  to  us.  Ponere  difficile  est  qiiw 
placuere  diu. 

(e)  Authority  has  been  another  great  factor  in 
the  development  of  belief.  Outside  of  Christendom 
millions  believe  not  because  they  think  themselves  to 
apprehend  the  truth  of  what  they  accept  as  divine 
verities,  but  because  they  deem  themselves  bound  to 
believe  whatever  Confucius,  Gotama,  or  Mohammed 
have  taught.  Within  Christendom  millions  in  like 
manner  accept  as  Christian  truth  not  that  which  com- 
mends itself  of  itself  to  them  as  true,  but  that  which 
they  believe  to  be  taught  as  such  by  an  infallible  au- 
thority. 

(/)  Belief  in  general,  and  religious  belief  in  par- 
ticular, are  likewise  strongly  affected  by  the  feelings, 

496 


SOME    CAUSES    THEREOF 

emotions,  and  desires.  It  is  not  true,  as  some  have 
maintained,  that  fear  alone  made  the  gods ;  but  fear 
had  much  to  do  with  the  making  of  them,  or  there 
would  not  have  been  either  so  many  gods  of  terror,  or 
even  so  many  terribly  erroneous  representations  of 
the  true  God.  I^or  are  man's  gods,  as  others  have 
held,  merely  projections  ot  his  own  desires ;  but  his 
desires  account  for  many  of  his  beliefs  regarding  his 
gods.  Sensuous  passion,  for  instance,  has  had  a  large 
and  deplorable  place  in  history;  and  it  has  held  a 
correspondingly  large  and  deplorable  place  in  mythol- 
ogy. There  is  no  feeling,  no  appetite,  no  emotion  of 
the  human  heart  which  may  not,  which  does  not,  so 
stimulate  imagination,  and  so  act  on  the  judgment, 
as  to  contribute  to  the  formation  and  character  of  its 
religious  conceptions  and  convictions. 

(g)  Imagination  has  likewise  had  a  potent  influ- 
ence in  the  development  of  religious  belief.  When 
properly  conjoined  and  incorporated  with  reason, 
when  conformed  to  and  regulated  by  reason,  it  gives 
support  and  energy,  strength  and  wings,  to  reason  in 
the  sphere  of  religion  not  less  than  in  the  spheres  of 
science  and  practical  life.  But  imagination  is  very 
apt  to  be  disjoined  and  divorced  from  reason;  to 
refuse  its  control  and  guidance;  to  have  little  or 
no  regard  to  probability  or  truth;  and  then  in  the 
spiritual  as  in  other  spheres  it  becomes  the  active 
and  too  successful  enemy  of  reason,  a  source  of 
manifold  errors  and  faults,  and,  as  Lord  Bacon 
calls  it,  "a  troublesome,  meddlesome,  impertinent 
faculty." 

(7i)  Religious  belief  has  further  been  affected  by 
497 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

individual  experiences  and  historical  events.  A  sim- 
ple-minded Catholic  peasant  when  in  difficulty  or  dis- 
tress invokes,  say,  the  aid  of  some  popular  saint,  re- 
lief follows,  and  thenceforth  his  belief  in  the  power 
of  that  saint  cannot  be  shaken  by  argument  because 
he  imagines  it  to  have  been  confirmed  by  experience. 
An  educated  Protestant  will  very  likely  feel  amazed 
at  such  a  lack  of  logic,  and  yet,  if  a  proud  and  selfish 
man,  he  may  very  possibly,  when  afflictions  befall 
himself,  see  in  them  sure  indications  that  there  is  no 
providential  government  of  the  world.  Assur,  it 
would  seem,  became  the  chief  god  of  Assyria  simply 
because  of  the  personal  preference  for  him  of  a  war- 
rior king  who  gained  numerous  and  decisive  victo- 
ries. Mohammedans  hold  that  no  true  prophet  is  un- 
successful, and  accordingly  ask  from  the  claimant  to 
a  Divine  mission  little  more  in  the  way  of  evidence 
than  that  he  should  succeed.  Hence  there  have  been 
so  many  Mahdis,  and  hence  the  desirableness  in  the 
interests  of  truth  of  Mahdis  being  "  smashed  "  as 
quickly  as  possible. 

(i)  Of  causes  of  the  kind  to  which  I  have  been 
referring  the  last  I  shall  mention  is,  I  believe,  the 
strongest  of  all — the  self,  the  personality.  The  main 
cause  of  erroneous  belief  is,  I  am  convinced,  want  of 
earnestness,  honesty,  and  goodness,  in  man's  own  es- 
sential nature  and  activity.  That  there  are  many 
innocent  and  inevitable  errors  is  not  to  be  doubted; 
but  neither  is  it  to  be  doubted  that  for  most  of 
their  erroneous  beliefs,  and  especially  for  many  of 
those  which  most  practically  and  directly  concern 
them,  men  are  themselves  seriously  to  blame.     Cen- 

498 


SCEPTICAL  INFLUENCE  EREONEOUS 

tral  ligbt  is  what  they  above  all  need  to  dispel  their 
circumferential  darkness. 

'*  He  that  has  light  within  his  own  dear  breast. 
May  sit  in  the  centre  and  enjoy  bright  day  ; 
But  he  that  hides  a  dark  soul  and  foul  thoughts, 
Benighted  walks  under  the  midday  beam — 
Himself  is  his  own  dungeon. " 

V.    THE    SCEPTICAL    INFERENCE    FROM    PREVALENCE    OF 
FALSE    RELIGIOUS   BELIEF    ERRONEOUS 

False  religious  belief,  then,  is  lamentably  preva- 
lent, and  its  prevalence  can  be  naturally  and  easily 
accounted  for  by  the  action  of  causes  of  belief  which 
are  not  reasons  for  belief.  As  such  causes  are  nu- 
merous and  powerful,  the  quantity  of  irrational  belief 
in  the  world  is  enormous.  Does  it  follow  that  we  can 
legitimately  draw  from  those  two  facts,  the  one  of 
which  is  the  explanation  of  the  other,  the  sceptical  or 
agnostic  inferences  which  have  so  often  been  deduced 
from  them  ?    My  answer  is  in  the  negative. 

Hume,  I  have  said,  was  perhaps  the  first  to  draw 
the  distinction  between  reasons  and  causes  of  belief 
in  a  way  really  serviceable  to  the  historical  study  of 
religion.  But  from  the  very  dawn  of  religious  scep- 
ticism in  India  and  in  Greece  the  distinction  was  so 
far  perceived  as  to  be  employed  to  discredit  religious 
belief.  Scepticism  has  always  pointed  to  the  multi- 
plicity and  contrariety  of  religions,  and  to  the  way  in 
which  they  have  arisen,  as  an  argument  for  rejecting 
them.  Hume  himself  strove  to  show  that  the  chief 
causes  of  religion  had  not  been  reasons  which  intelli- 
gent men  would  think  of  giving  as  a  justification  for 

499 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

religion,  but  the  desires  and  passions  of  men  whose 
intelligence  was  dormant,  biassed,  and  untrust- 
worthy; and  he  did  this  in  such  a  way  as  to  suggest 
that  it  had  no  proper  justification.  It  still  is  the 
habitual  practice  of  sceptics  to  dwell  on  the  contra- 
riety and  absurdity  of  a  vast  number  of  religions :  to 
show  how  naturally  they  are  explicable  by  the  work- 
ing of  non-rational  causes;  and  then  to  infer  that 
there  is  no  truth  in  religious  belief;  that  religious 
belief  is  essentially  irrational  belief;  and  that  man 
has  not  been  made  for  the  attainment  of  religious 
truth.  Now,  I  deny  that  either  the  fact  of  the  preva- 
lence of  false  religious  belief,  or  what  I  admit  to  be 
the  correct  explanation  of  it,  warrants  these  or  such- 
like inferences. 

One  reason  for  the  denial  is  that  the  argument 
employed  by  scepticism  has  as  much  relevancy  and 
force  against  the  kind  of  doubt  and  unbelief  which  it 
seeks  to  inculcate  as  against  the  faith  which  it  would 
fain  discredit  as  credulity.  It  applies  to  scepticism 
itself  not  less  than  to  what  it  calls  dogmatism.  ISTon- 
rational  causes  may,  and  do,  generate  scepticism  as 
well  as  dogmatism.  Disbelief  and  doubt  have  no 
more  right  to  assume  that  they  are  founded  on  reason 
and  evidence  than  belief  and  faitli.  Belief,  disbelief, 
and  doubt  are  in  the  same  predicament,  and  the  ar- 
gument cannot  fairly  be  urged  only  against  one  of 
them — belief,  i.e.,  affirmative  or  positive  belief. 
Make  a  study  of,  say,  Montaigne,  Bayle,  and  Hume 
on  the  one  hand,  and  of  Augustine,  Calvin,  and  Sam- 
uel Rutherford  on  the  other,  with  a  view  to  deter- 
mine how  far  their  opinions  were  due  to  their  cir- 

500 


EEASONS    THEREOF 

cumstaiices,  the  character  of  the  times  in  which  they 
lived,  their  temperaments,  their  mental  and  moral 
peculiarities,  their  experiences,  and  the  like,  and  how 
far  to  reason  and  evidence,  and,  if  the  investigation 
be  thorough  and  impartial,  it  will  be  found  that  the 
sceptical  creeds  of  the  first  three  mentioned  may  be 
just  as  plausibly,  and  just  as  truly,  referred  to  non- 
rational  causes  as  the  dogmatic  creeds  of  the  last  three 
mentioned. 

Another  reason  for  denial  of  the  sceptical  infer- 
ences under  consideration  is  the  excess  of  generalisa- 
tion involved  in  the  sceptical  argumentation.  The 
prevalence  of  false  religious  belief  is  certainly  not  a 
proof  of  the  non-existence  of  true  religious  belief. 
If  in  all  systems  of  religion  erroneous  beliefs  can  be 
easily  detected,  it  does  not  follow  that  they  contain 
only  such  beliefs.  Because  religious  belief  has  been 
to  a  great  extent  produced  by  causes  which  are  not 
reasons,  we  are  not  entitled  to  conclude  that  all  relig- 
ious belief  is  irrational.  To  justify  that  inference 
we  should  require  to  show  that  religious  belief  has 
been  wholly  due  to  causes  which  are  not  reasons. 
That,  however,  cannot  be  done.  The  argument  as- 
sumes to  be  universal  what  is  only  general.  There 
are  not  only  causes  of  religious  belief  which  are  not 
reasons  for  it,  but  there  are  likewise  reasons  for  it 
which  are  also  causes  for  it.  All  true  reasons  for  it 
have  always  been  among  the  causes  of  it.  All  appre- 
hensions which  the  human  spirit  has  obtained  of  the 
Eternal,  and  all  the  modes  of  the  Eternal's  self-mani- 
festation to  the  human  spirit,  have  always  been  at 
once  reasons  and  causes  of  religious  faith. 

501 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

It  follows  from  what  has  now  been  stated  that  an- 
other ground  for  rejection  of  the  sceptical  inferences 
referred  to  is  that  the  distinction  between  reasons 
and  causes  of  belief  on  which  their  justification  is 
rested  is  far  from  a  distinct  or  definite  one.  It  is,  in- 
deed, much  the  reverse.  It  is  fluctuating  and  vague, 
crossed  and  confused.  Whether  Hume  was  in  any 
measure  aware  of  this  or  not  we,  perhaps,  cannot 
know.  It  certainly  would  not  at  all  have  suited  his 
purpose  to  show  that  he  was  aware  of  it.  But  it  is 
somewhat  remarkable  and  altogether  regrettable  that 
Mr.  Arthur  Balfour  should  not  have  more  clearly 
seen  the  real  character  of  Hume's  distinction.  The 
greater  part  of  what  seems  to  me  erroneous  in  thought 
and  misleading  in  expression,  both  in  his  Philosophic 
Doubt  and  Foundations  of  Belief,  springs,  I  think, 
from  a  too  hasty  and  trusting  acceptance  of  the  dic- 
tum of  our  Scottish  arch-sceptic. 

"  There  is  no  distinction,"  says  Mr.  Balfour  in 
Philosophic  Douht,  ^  "  which  has  to  be  kept  more 
steadily  in  view  than  this  between  the  causes  or  an- 
tecedents which  produce  a  belief,  and  the  grounds 
or  reasons  which  justify  one.  The  inquiry  into  the 
first  is  psychological,  the  inquiry  into  the  second  is 
philosophical,  and  they  belong  therefore  . 
to  entirely  distinct  departments  of  knowledge." 
Those  words,  it  seems  to  me,  require  to  be  supple- 
mented and  corrected  by  the  statement  that  there  is 
a  truth  on  the  subject  which  ought  to  be  kept  just 
as  steadily  in  view;  and  that  it  is  this, — the  direct 
causes,  the  immediate  antecedents,  of  belief  are  al- 

■P.  5. 
502 


KEASONS  OF  BELIEF  CAUSES  OF  BELIEF 

ways  at  least  supposed  grounds  or  reasons,  and  all 
true  grounds  or  reasons  of  belief  are  also  among  the 
causes  and  antecedents  of  belief.  If  that  be  so,  how- 
ever, the  inquiries  into  causes  and  grounds,  antece- 
dents and  reasons,  cannot  be  so  distinct  as  Mr.  Bal- 
four represents  them  to  be. 

I  say  the  direct  causes,  the  immediate  antecedents, 
of  belief  are  always  at  least  supposed  grounds  or  rea- 
sons. Belief  is  never  directly  produced,  never  finally 
or  strictly  speaking  caused,  by  what  is  not  at  least 
imagined  to  be  a  reason,  at  least  deemed  to  be  a  real 
perception  of  truth.  The  so-called  causes  and  ante- 
cedents of  belief  which  are  wholly  non-rational  or  ir- 
rational— desires,  passions,  and  various  of  the  other 
influences  to  which  I  have  already  referred — do  not 
of  themselves  determine  belief, — are  not  in  direct  and 
immediate  contact  with,  but  act  on  it  only  through 
disposing  and  biassing  the  intellect  to  take  bad  rea- 
sons for  good,  weak  reasons  for  strong,  errors  for 
truths.  Authority,  for  instance,  which  Mr.  Balfour 
op}X)ses  to  reason,  receives  the  mental  assent,  the  in- 
tellectual homage,  of  no  human  being  simply  as  au- 
thority. All  faith  in  it  deems  itself  reasonable.  Let 
any  one  assail  any  form  of  religious  or  political  au- 
thority in  the  name  of  reason  and  he  will  find  the 
believers  in  it  ready  to  do  battle  with  him  in  the  same 
name.  Mr.  Balfour  himself,  while  opposing  author- 
ity to  reason,  tries  to  do  justice  to  it,  and  is  largely 
successful  in  doing  it  justice.  But  how  ?  Just  with 
reasons,  which  of  itself  surely  implies  that  authority 
and  reason,  an  antecedent  and  a  ground  of  belief,  are 
not  "  entirely  distinct." 

503 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

Reasons  are  also  causes  of  belief.  Good  reasons 
are  its  only  true  causes.  And,  I  must  add,  it  is  just 
such  reasons,  just  legitimate  causes,  which  are  the 
most  permanent  ones,  and  those  which  acquire  con- 
stantly increasing  power  as  the  religious  history  of 
humanity  advances,  while  those  causes  which  are  not 
real  and  satisfactory  reasons  become  proportionally 
less  influential  in  forming  and  modifying  religious 
belief.  As  religious  belief  develops  it  comes  grad- 
ually to  rest  more  and  more  on  its  rational  grounds, 
its  appropriate  evidences,  and  to  shake  off  more  and 
more  its  dependence  on  what  is  unworthy  of  it.  Thus 
has  it  been  for  instance  with  the  belief  in  Deity.  It 
has  become  from  age  to  age  loftier  and  purer,  more 
reasonable,  more  moral  and  spiritual ;  has  gradually 
cast  out  the  elements  of  arbitrariness  and  grossness 
which  defiled  and  debased  it  in  its  earlier  stages,  and 
gradually  absorbed  into  itself  all  that  is  best.  Im- 
moral and  irrational  conceptions  of  the  Divine  have 
been  one  after  another  thrown  aside.  In  the  struggle 
of  religions  for  existence  the  victory  has  been  surely 
although  slowly  with  the  fittest,  in  the  sense  of  the 
truest,  the  purest,  the  most  satisfying  to  the  higher 
nature  of  man.  There  is  a  fact  which  tends  to  show 
that  man  has  been  made  for  the  attainment  and  reali- 
sation of  religious  truth ;  and  that  the  sceptical  infer- 
ence to  the  contrary  has  no  more  warrant  than  the 
other  sceptical  inferences  already  rejected.  The  testi- 
mony of  history  so  far  as  it  goes  decidedly  contradicts 
what  scepticism  would  affirm.  It  certifies  that  prog- 
ress, not  retrogression,  is  the  rule  in  religion,  just  as 
in  science,  in  morality,  and  in  art.   I  say  the  rule ;  not 

604 


PROGRESSIVE  TRUTHFULNESS  OF  RELIGION 

the  necessary  or  inevitable  law,  not  what  has  been  or 
must  be  in  all  circumstances,  not  what  occurs  inde- 
pendently of  the  free  choice  of  men  and  the  prudent 
and  energetic  exertion  of  their  faculties,  yet  what  is 
certainly  a  fact  of  the  most  unquestionable  and  com- 
prehensive kind. 

Are  there  any  reasons  for  that  fact, — the  progres- 
sive and  expanding  rationality  and  truthfulness  of  re- 
ligious belief  ?  There  are,  and  they  only  confirm  the 
inference  which  the  fact  itself  naturally  suggests,  and 
which  scepticism  vainly  denies. 

One  reason  is  that  belief  is  what  it  is.  It  always 
and  of  its  very  nature  refers  to  knowledge  and  truth. 
It  is  only  in  them  that  it  can  find  its  self -justifica- 
tion. As  soon  as  the  suspicion  that  they  are  absent 
enters  into  it  restlessness  and  pain  make  themselves 
felt.  Hence  doubt  not  only  plays  a  large  part  but 
often  a  beneficent  part  in  religion.  Hence  also  belief 
even  at  its  lowest  tends  to  become  belief  at  its  high- 
est; tends  towards  the  assurance  which  can  only  be 
found  in  adequate  evidence,  in  conclusively  discov- 
ered truth,  even  as  a  seed  germinates  and  seeks  the 
light  in  order  to  its  full  development  as  a  plant  or 
tree. 

Another  reason  is  that  human  nature  is  what  it  is. 
Although  it  contains  a  great  variety  of  particular 
powers,  passions,  and  affections,  which  have  their 
several  peculiarities,  and  are  often  in  conflict,  yet, 
as  Bishop  Butler  has  so  conclusively  shown,  it  is  also 
a  constitution,  a  system,  an  organic  whole;  and  this 
precisely  because  all  its  several  susceptibilities,  ten- 
dencies, and  activities    are  rightfully,  however  far 

505 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

from  being  so  actually,  under  the  guidance  and  con- 
trol of  one  great  governing  principle, — the  power 
which  distinguishes  truth  from  error,  right  from 
wrong.  In  other  words,  human  nature  is  essentially 
rational  and  moral.  It  can  only  develop  noraially 
in  so  far  as  it  moves  towards  truth  and  conformity  to 
duty.  Its  true  destination,  however  long  it  may  take 
to  realise  it,  is  to  have  reason  not  as  the  slave  but  as 
the  master  of  imagination  and  passion;  conscience 
not  as  the  dependent  but  the  director  of  all  particular 
feelings  and  interests. 

Still  another  reason  is  that  the  world  and  history 
are  what  they  are, — the  one  a  system  rationally 
planned,  and  the  other  a  process  rationally  directed. 
All  particular  causes  are  both  so  arranged,  co-ordi- 
nated, and  controlled  that  they  subserve  a  general 
rational  end.  They  may  seem  forces  of  the  same  rank 
as  reason,  and  able  to  oppose  it  with  success,  but 
they  are  found  to  be  in  the  long-run  its  instruments. 
They  so  operate  as  ultimately  to  profit  reason.  Nat- 
ure and  history  may  appear  to  exhibit  merely  the 
play  of  blind  forces,  but,  in  fact,  each  is  a  drama  of 
which  the  law  and  issue  is  the  glory  of  rationality 
and  morality. 

Further,  certain  causes  influence  religious  belief 
which,  although  not  directly  and  entirely  reasons  for 
it,  are  conditions  of  its  reasonableness.  Such  are 
[a)  the  extension  of  knowledge  and  science;  (b)  the 
growth  of  reason  and  of  the  general  ideas  which  rule 
it;  (c)  the  growth  of  conscience,  enlargement  of 
moral  vision ;  (d)  the  growth  of  the  affections,  refine- 
ment of  the  feelings;  and  (e)  the  teaching  and  action 

506 


REASONABLENESS    OF    RELIGION 

of  great  religious  personalities.  None  of  these  facts 
or  forces  are  directly  rational  grounds  of  religious 
belief,  but  they  are  factors  which  aid  in  conforming 
it  to  reason.  The  extension  of  knowledge  does  so, 
A  man  may  believe  what  is  not  in  accordance  with 
knowledge,  but  he  cannot  believe  the  contrary  of 
what  he  knows,  or,  in  other  words,  what  he  is  aware 
to  be  false. ^  The  progress  of  Astronomy,  Geology, 
Biology,  &c.,  have  greatly  amended  religious  belief, 
and  thereby  advanced  theology.  The  development 
of  reason  and  of  its  ruling  ideas  is  a  closely  connected 
and  kindred  cause.  Hence  the  interests  of  philoso- 
phy and  of  theology  are  inseparable.  Every  ad- 
vance of  the  former  is  to  the  advantage  of  the  latter. 
The  growth  of  the  idea  of  unity  destroyed  polythe- 
ism. The  clear  apprehension  of  the  idea  of  law  has 
made  crude  and  extravagant  forms  of  belief  in  mira- 
cles generally  impossible.  The  regulative  ideas  of 
reason  are,  in  fact,  the  strongest  forces  in  the  world, 
and  their  power  is  nowhere  more  clearly  traceable 
than  in  the  spiritual  history  of  humanity.  As  re- 
gards conscience,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  as  man 
rises  in  the  scale  of  being  it  becomes  clearer,  purer, 
and  stronger,  rules  more  effectively  the  whole  mind 
and  conduct,  and  gradually  vanquishes  the  views  of 
God  and  of  God's  relations  to  mankind  which  grieve 
and  offend  it.  In  like  manner,  proportionally  to  the 
refinement  of  man's  nature  and  affections,  he  ceases 

'  The  doctrine  of  "  twofold  truth  "  has  never  been  held,  so  far 
as  I  am  aware,  with  complete  sincerity.  The  distinction  between 
"  credita  "  and  "  physica,"  on  which  Averroes,  Pomponazzi,  and 
Galileo  rested  it,  was  only  a  prudential  device  against  religious 
persecution. 

507 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

to  be  able  to  believe  the  gross  dogmas  or  to  practise 
the  coarse  and  immoral  rites  congenial  to  him  in  the 
savage  state.  No  one  will  deny  that  great  personali- 
ties have  been  immense  forces  in  the  religious  his- 
tory of  mankind.  Nor  can  it  be  reasonably  denied 
that  on  the  whole  they  have  been  forces  which  acted 
mainly  on  the  side  of  truth  and  reason.  Although 
Confucius,  Gotama,  and  Mohammed  have  propa- 
gated much  error,  they  have  diffused  still  more  truth. 
The  religions  which  they  founded  are  great  religions 
because  of  the  great  truths  and  high  aspirations  to 
which  they  have  given  powerful  and  enduring  ex- 
pression. 

Every  consistent  theist,  it  must  be  added,  will 
maintain  that  there  is  a  still  deeper  reason  than  those 
already  mentioned  for  the  course  of  humanity  hav- 
ing been  towards  ever-increasing  enlightenment  and 
improvement.  It  is  that  God  is  and  is  what  He  is, — 
the  source  of  all  dependent  existence,  the  supreme 
and  infinite  Reason  to  whose  all  comprehensive  and 
ever-operative  will  the  essential  rationality  of  human 
nature,  the  wonderful  order  of  the  physical  universe, 
and  the  intellectual  and  moral  progress  in  history, 
are  alone  consistently  traceable.  It  is  the  glory  of 
our  finite  reasons  to  be  able  to  discern  in  some 
measure  the  course  and  direction  in  which  the  Infi- 
nite Reason  has  been  working  through  millions  of 
ages.  We  not  only  believe  but  certainly  know  that 
there  were  millions  of  ages  during  which,  through 
stage  after  stage  of  merely  physical  development, 
preparation  was  made  for  organic  and  animal  life, 
and  also  that  when  the  preparation  was  complete 

508 


EVOLUTION    OF   MAN 

the  life  appeared,  and  through  stage  after  stage  far 
more  wonderful  and  in  forms  innumerable,  was  de- 
veloped, but  ever  in  the  main  onwards  and  upwards. 
We,  further,  not  only  believe  but  know  that  those 
stages  of  the  evolution  of  the  earth  issued  in  the 
appearance  of  man,  a  being  distinct  from  all  other 
beings  of  the  earth,  in  that  he  feels  himself  akin  in 
his  personality  and  in  his  spiritual  affinities  and 
aspirations  to  the  Divine.  The  formation  of  man  is, 
according  to  the  development  theory  itself,  the  goal 
towards  which  the  physical  world  has  tended  from 
the  beginning.  After  the  appearance  of  man  the 
interest  of  the  evolution  of  the  world  ceases  to  be 
mainly  physical  or  animal,  and  becomes  mainly  spir- 
itual. It  lies  not  in  the  production  of  new  species  of 
beasts,  but  in  the  improvement  of  mankind.  The 
history  of  mankind  is  probably  yet  only  in  the  earlier 
stages  of  a  course  to  which  no  end  can  be  assigned, 
but  so  far  as  it  has  proceeded  it  has  clearly  been  on 
the  whole  an  education  into  truth  and  virtue.  With 
that  great  fact  before  him  the  theist  at  least  cannot 
fail  to  ask,  Is  it  conceivable  that  the  Reason  which 
has  thus  willed  and  worked  throughout  the  past  will 
depart  from  the  line  of  procedure  which  He  has  fol- 
lowed throughout  so  many  millions  of  ages,  and 
henceforth  work  not  towards  the  higher  but  towards 
the  lower,  not  towards  the  light  but  towards  the  dark- 
ness, not  towards  truth  but  towards  falsehood,  not 
towards  the  elevation  but  towards  the  degradation  of 
the  spirits  whom  He  calls  into  being?  Assuredly  the 
answer  of  the  theist  will  be,  No.  To  him  at  least 
such  a  conception  can  only  seem  self-contradictory 

509 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

and  absurd — the  conception  of  an  Irrational  Reason. 
And  well  may  we,  I  think,  adopt  his  answer;  and 
while  guarding  against  forming  exaggerated  esti- 
mates of  progress,  or  overlooking  the  reasons  which 
abound  for  thinking  it -will  be  slow,  toilsome,  and 
painful,  both  acknowledge  its  existence  in  the  past 
and  trust  that  it  will  be  carried  on  in  the  future  to 
a  glorious  future.  Well  may  we,  looking  back  on  the 
past, 

"  rest  in  the  faith 
'      That  man's  perfection  is  the  crowning  flower, 
Towards  which  the  urgent  sap  in  life's  great  tree 
Is  pressing, — seen  in  puny  blossoms  now. 
But  in  the  world's  great  morrows  to  expand 
With  broadest  petal  and  with  deepest  glow." 

VI.    TliUE    INFERENCES    FROM    PREVALENCE    OF    FALSE 
RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

Having  now  seen  what  inferences  are  not  to  be 
drawn  from  the  prevalence  of  false  religious  belief 
and  from  its  explanation,  it  only  remains  for  me  to 
indicate  in  this  chapter  some  inferences  which  may 
be  truly  drawn  from  them. 

Obviously  one  such  inference  is  that  there  is  much 
need  for  care  and  caution  in  the  formation  of  our 
religious  beliefs.  Seeing  that  false  religious  belief  is 
so  prevalent,  and  that  there  is  so  much  to  produce  it, 
all  general  eulogies  of  believing  and  all  general  de- 
nunciations of  doubting  in  regard  to  religious  mat- 
ters must  be  exceedingly  foolish.  There  is  plainly 
far  too  much  assurance  and  far  too  little  hesitation 
in  a  vast  nunil>er  of  minds  as  regards  what  is  true 

510 


CAUTION    AS    TO    RELIGIOUS    BELIEF 

and  what  is  false  in  such  matters.  For  one  who  be- 
lieves too  little  there  are,  if  society  as  a  whole  be 
considered,  hundreds  who  believe  too  much,  too 
readily,  without  adequate  and  independent  reflec- 
tion. An  enormous  number  of  mankind  are  en- 
slaved, duped,  and  exploited  by  those  who  claim  to 
be  their  religious  teachers,  as  well  as  by  those  who 
undertake  to  be  their  political  leaders,  owing  mainly 
to  their  own  credulity,  their  precipitancy  of  judg- 
ment, their  want  of  consideration  and  reflection, 
of  criticism  and  investigation.  What  the  world  re- 
quires is  not  more  faith  but  only  more  faith  of  a  right 
kind:  more  of  the  faith  which  rests  on  knowledge, 
which  conforms  to  evidence,  which,  does  not  pretend 
to  certainty  when  it  has  not  got  it,  which  does  not 
despise  even  the  lowest  degrees  of  probability  when 
they  are  real,  which  seeks  to  follow  whatever  light 
there  is,  and  which  fears  no  criticism  because  abso- 
lutely truthful. 

Another  inference  is  the  need  of  being  on  our 
guard  against  unreasonable  doubt  or  excessive  dis- 
belief. We  are  bound  to  doubt  and  disbelieve  as 
well  as  to  believe  according  to  evidence,  conformably 
to  reason.  What  is  true  of  our  beliefs  is  in  this 
respect  true  also  of  our  doubts  and  disbeliefs,  for 
doubt  is  itself,  as  we  have  seen,  of  the  nature  of 
belief,  and  disbelief  is  negative  or  antagonistic  belief. 
The  same  causes  which  prevent  men  from  believing 
aright  prevent  them  from  doubting  or  disbelieving 
aright.  All  influences  which  move  them  to  the  too 
hasty  acceptance  of  error  indispose  them  to  the  ac- 
ceptance of  truth  on  evidence.    Indolence,  prejudice, 

511 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

passion,  &c.,  may  lead  to  the  rejection  of  the  very 
strongest  evidence.  No  evidence  will  produce  assent 
if,  instead  of  being  carefully  and  candidly  appreci- 
ated, it  is  unexamined  or  examined  only  with  the 
determination  to  find  flaws  in  it.  Nowhere  may  pas- 
sional causes  be  more  clearly  seen  to  have  had  exces- 
sive influence  and  truly  rational  considerations  less 
than  their  due  than  among  atheists,  so-called  relig- 
ious freethinkers,  and  social  anarchists.  To  feel 
adequately  the  importance  of  being  on  our  guard 
alike  against  credulity,  superstition,  undue  doubt, 
and  excessive  disbelief  in  the  spiritual  sphere,  we 
must  realise  as  we  ought  the  necessity  and  value  of 
true  religious  belief  both  to  individuals  and  societies. 
Without  such  belief  moral  distinctions  will  not  be 
seen  in  their  real  sacredness,  nor  the  passions  curbed, 
nor  burdens  borne,  nor  self-sacrifices  made,  as  they 
require  to  be  if  the  souls  of  individuals  and  the  lives 
of  societies  are  to  prosper.  It  is  vain  to  think  that 
mere  science  or  mere  ethics  will  suffice.  "  As  well 
trust,"  says  Mr.  Harrison,  "  in  the  rule  of  three  and 
the  maxims  in  a  copy-book  to  enable  us  to  deal  with 
the  storms  and  trials  of  life." 

What  has  just  been  stated  suggests  as  a  third 
inference  that  in  regard  to  religious  belief  it  must 
be  the  part  of  wisdom  to  concern  oneself  chiefly  with 
what  is  essential  and  vital,  central  and  practical,  in 
religion,  and  to  seek  especially  to  be  well  grounded 
and  firmly  fixed  in  faith  therein.  We  ought  to  dis- 
tinguish between  those  eternal  religious  verities  a 
realisation  of  which  is  directly  and  immediately 
necessary  to  the  welfare  of  our  spirits,  and  all  ques- 

512 


EEASOX   IT    SHOULD    CONFORM   TO 

tions  regarding  religion  which  may  be  interesting  but 
the  solution  of  which  is  not  indispensable.  A  very 
short  creed  may  be  much  better  than  a  long  one,  and 
quite  sufficient  if  received  intelligently  and  firmly. 
The  Lord's  Prayer  is  short;  but  if  a  man  thoroughly 
believe  it — thoroughly  believe  in  God's  Fatherhood, 
man's  brotherhood,  the  sacredness  of  God's  name, 
the  grandeur  and  the  claims  of  God's  kingdom,  the 
obligations  of  God's  will,  and  our  dependence  on 
Him  for  the  supply  of  our  bodily  wants,  for  pardon- 
ing mercy,  and  for  deliverance  from  temptation  and 
evil — he  will  not  only  pray  aright  but  live  aright, 
need  fall  into  no  very  deadly  error,  may  safely  be 
content  to  form  no  conclusion  as  to  many  keenly 
debated  religious  questions,  and  to  take  no  part  in 
many  distracting  religious  controversies,  but  apply 
himself  heartily  and  joyously  to  serve  God  in  what- 
ever work  He  in  His  providence  assigns  him. 

My  final  inference  would  be  that  religious  belief 
ought  to  be  the  reasonable  belief  of  the  whole  man, 
— of  the  whole  spirit.  All  belief  ought  to  be  reason- 
able. We  have  no  right  to  believe  what  we  do  not 
know^  to  be  true,  or  more  than  we  know  to  be  true. 
Evidence  should  be  the  measure  of  assent.  Assent 
should  be  in  proportion  to  evidence.  For  elsewhere 
maintaining  that  view  I  have  been  more  than  once 
described  by  reviewers  as  a  rationalist.  And  if  to 
hold  that  belief  to  be  legitimate  must  be  regulated  by 
and  conformed  to  reason  is  to  be  a  rationalist,  un- 
doubtedly I  am  a  rationalist — an  unblushing  and  im- 
penitent rationalist — who  considers  all  those  who  do 
not  thus  far  agree  with  him  to  be  irrationalists. 

613 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

But  I  by  no  means  think  that  the  reason  to  which 
belief  ought  to  be  conformed  is  so-called  pure  reason 
or  mere  ratiocination.  Nor  is  it  exclusively  either 
what  Reid  calls  any  one  of  its  offices  or  degrees,  or 
what  Mr.  Balfour  calls  either  "  its  ordinary  and  pop- 
ular "  or  its  "  transcendental  "  sense — either  "  the 
merely  critical  and  inferential  process  "  with  which 
he  identifies  it  or  "  the  Logos  or  Absolute  Reason." 
It  is  no  isolated  entity,  separate  faculty,  or  abstrac- 
tion of  any  kind.  It  is  reason,  however,  in  the  ordi- 
nary and  popular  sense  in  which  we  all  speak  of 
those  who  have  become  insane  and  morally  irre- 
sponsible as  having  "  lost  their  reason,"  and  also  in 
the  sense  in  which  the  term  has  been  more  largely 
used  than  in  any  other  by  philosophers  from  ancient 
times  to  the  present  day.  It  is  not  reason  divorced 
from  any  inherent  power  or  legitimate  affection  of 
the  human  mind,  but  reason  conjoined  with  them  all, 
■with  sense,  perception,  and  conception,  with  intui- 
tion, judgment,  and  inference,  with  imagination, 
with  appetites  and  desires,  with  moral  and  spiritual 
susceptibilities  and  aspirations.  It  is  the  entire 
rational  self,  regulating  all  and  not  dispensing  with 
any  of  the  principles  and  powers  of  human  nature 
so  far  as  they  can  be  rationally  controlled,  made 
"  subservient  to  moral  purposes,"  and  "  auxihar  to 
Divine."  "  Vernunft,"  says  a  recent  writer  on 
Logic,  "  ist  der  Gesamtausdruck  fiir  die  hochste, 
umfassendste,  gesteigertste  Bethiitigung  des  gesamt- 
en  Seelenlebens  des  Menschen."  ^  Reason  cannot 
dispense  with  the  aid,  for  instance,  even  of  imagina- 
>H.  Wolff,  Handbuch  d.  LogVc^  p.  162. 
514 


REASON    AND   FAITH 

tion  in  any  department  of  science  or  any  sphere  of 
ordinary  life.  Why  should  it  be  expected  to  do  so 
in  religion  so  long  as  it  keeps  imagination  in  due  de- 
pendence on  itself?  A  religion  which  does  not  satisfy 
the  natural  and  legitimate  desires  of  the  heart  cannot 
be  a  true  or  reasonable  religion.  AVhile  every  evil 
passion  tends  to  pervert  religious  belief,  all  generous 
sympathies,  all  pure  affections,  all  refined  feelings, 
all  upward  tendencies,  aid  reason  in  its  quest  of  re- 
ligious truth.  Why  should  reason,  the  rational  ego, 
in  the  region  of  religion,  or  in  any  other  region,  cut 
off  its  own  wings  or  cut  itself  off  f rom^  any  source  of 
strength?  As  it  is  with  the  whole  mind  and  heart 
and  soul  that  we  should  love  Absolute  Truth  and 
Perfect  Goodness,  so  is  it  also  with  the  whole  mind 
and  heart  and  soul  that  we  should  believe  in  them. 

When  I  say  that  a  great  many  persons  believe  a 
great  deal  too  much,  by  that  I  mean  merely  that 
they  believe  a  great  deal  which  they  have  no  good 
evidence  for  believing,  no  real  right  to  believe, — a 
great  deal  that  is  false  and  mischievous.  Far  be  it 
from  me,  however,  to  say  that  we  believe  too  much 
in  the  sense  of  believing  too  strongly,  too  thorough- 
ly, too  heartily  what  is  true  and  good,  well-founded, 
sufficiently  attested.  A  weak,  a  wavering,  a  half- 
hearted faith  in  what  is  entitled  to  a  firm,  a  thor- 
ough, a  complete  faith,  is  always  a  great  misfortune 
and  often  a  grievous  fault.  In  the  faith  with  which 
we  devote  ourselves  to  the  service  of  the  Supreme 
there  should  be  no  weakness  or  wavering,  doubt  or 
fear.  In  the  faith  with  which  we  offer  ourselves  up 
on  His  altar  there  should  be  all  of  life  and  energy, 

515 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

of  thought  and  goodness,  which  is  in  ns,  Nothing 
which  is  required  of  us  should  be  reserved  or  with- 
held. 

VII.    BASES    OF    AGNOSTIC    EELIGIOUS    BELIEF    IN 
CHRISTIANITY 

Religious  agnostics  while  professing  belief  in  God 
deny  that  the  basis  of  that  belief  is  to  be  found  in 
knowledge.  The  denial  raises  the  question,  Where, 
then,  do  they  themselves  find  a  foundation  for  their 
belief?  And  the  obvious  answer  is  that  it  can  only 
be  in  some  sort  of  bejief  itself.  So  obvious  is  it  that 
all  forms  of  religious  agnosticism  have  given  it,  and 
avowedly  rest  on  some  species  or  variety  of  belief. 
To  knowledge  religious  agnosticism  opposes  belief, 
to  reason  faith. 

The  question  of  the  relationship  between  knowl- 
edge and  belief,  reason  and  faith,  was  by  no  means 
unknown  to  or  undiscussed  by  Hindu  and  Arabian 
thinkers.  The  history  of  the  struggle  between  the 
two  powers,  however,  is  one  which  has  been  for  the 
most  part  confined  to  Christendom.  It  was  not  raised 
in  classical  antiquity,  owing  to  the  strange  dissocia- 
tion of  religion  and  truth  in  the  Grseco-Roman  mind. 
It  inevitably  arose,  however,  when  Christianity  made 
its  presence  felt  in  the  world.  "  I  am  the  Truth," 
said  Christ,  and  it  was  as  "  the  Truth  "  that  Chris- 
tianity claimed  to  be  received  and  to  be  the  power  of 
God  unto  salvation.  It  was  for  the  Truth  that  every 
Christian  martyr  suffered.  Some  of  the  early  Chris- 
tian fathers  were  led  by  their  zeal  against  pagan  phi- 
losophy to  harsh  censure  of  all  philosophy  and  to  oc- 

516 


REASON   AND   FAITH 

casional  denials  of  the  authority  of  reason,  but  none 
of  them  were  so  unwise  as  to  attempt  to  raise  scep- 
ticism to  the  rank  of  a  method  of  producing  believ- 
ers. The  relationship  of  reason  and  faith,  knowledge 
and  belief,  was  carefully  and  earnestly  studied  by  sev- 
eral of  the  most  eminent  scholastic  divines ;  but  it  was 
only  at  the  Renaissance  and  Reformation — only,  that 
is  to  say,  when  reason  began  to  take  up  an  attitude 
of  antagonism  to  religion  and  to  challenge  and  reject 
the  doctrines  of  the  Church — that  the  question  of  the 
interconnection  and  respective  rights  of  the  two 
powers  come  distinctly  into  the  foreground  as  of  pri- 
mary and  fundamental  importance.  It  has  occupied 
the  minds  of  all  the  chief  philosophers  and  theolo- 
gians of  the  modern  era.  The  names  of  Bacon  and 
Descartes,  of  Ilobbes  and  Spinoza,  of  Malebranche, 
Arnauld,  and  Pascal,  of  Hooker,  Bossuet,  Locke, 
Leibniz,  and  Wolf,  of  Kant,  Jacobi,  Fries,  Fichte, 
Hegel,  and  Schelling,  of  Herbart,  Krause,  and 
Baader,  of  Hamilton,  Mansel,  and  J.  H.  Newman, 
are  among  those  most  generally  known  in  connection 
with  it,  but  a  host  of  others  might  be  added  to  them. 
Obviously,  too,  the  question  is  here  to  stay.  There 
are  no  signs  of  cessation  of  interest,  or  even  of  de- 
crease of  interest,  in  it.  As  it  concerns  equally  phi- 
losophy and  theology,  and  both  vitally,  the  discussion 
of  it  is  never  arrested.  The  literature  to  which  it  has 
given  rise  is  consequently  already  enormous. 

I  have  happily  to  deal  only  with  a  special  phase  of 
the  subject,  or,  more  definitely  speaking,  only  to  in- 
dicate and  appreciate  the  forms  which  religious  ag- 
nosticism— the   agnosticism   which   retains  religious 

517 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

belief  while  discarding  religious  knowledge — may 
assume,  and  has  in  fact  assumed.  I  shall  arrange 
them  according  to  the  stages  of  religious  belief,  or, 
what  comes  to  the  same  thing,  according  to  the 
reasons  which  religious  belief,  notwithstanding  its 
repudiation  of  knowledge,  has  given  in  justification 
of  itself.  In  doing  so  it  seems  expedient  to  take  as 
our  example  or  type  of  religious  belief  the  kind  of  it 
with  which  we  are  most  familiar,  the  kind  of  it  preva- 
lent throughout  Christendom — belief  in  Christianity. 
Christianity  presents  itself  to  us  with  the  demand 
to  be  received  as  a  true  and  momentous  manifesta- 
tion of  the  character  and  will  of  God.  It  can  only 
be  received  by  being  believed.  The  unbelief  of  it  is 
the  rejection  of  it.  But  all  belief  of  it  is  not  the 
same  kind  of  belief.  Belief  is  a  state  of  mind  which 
has  various  stages.  I  may  believe,  for  instance,  that 
parallelograms  on  the  same  base  and  between  the 
same  parallels  are  equal  to  one  another  because  I 
know  that  Euclid  and  other  mathematicians  say  so, 
or  because  I  have  measured  such  parallelograms  and 
found  them  equal  as  asserted,  or  because  I  have 
demonstrated  their  equality.  But  the  belief  which 
rests  on  any  one  of  those  grounds  is  decidedly  differ- 
ent both  in  nature  and  in  worth  from  the  belief 
which  rests  on  either  of  the  other  grounds.  In  all 
the  three  cases  it  rests  on  evidence ;  but  the  evidence 
is  in  the  first  instance  the  evidence  of  testimony,  in 
the  second  that  of  practical  verification,  and  in  the 
third  that  of  mathematical  demonstration.  Religious 
belief  and  Christian  faith  may,  in  the  same  way,  be 
based    on    different    grounds,    and    some    of    those 

518 


BASES    OF   BELIEF    AND    FAITH    VAKIOUS 

grounds  may  be  more  satisfactory  and  more  elevated 
than  others.  Belief  in  the  being  and  presence  of 
God  and  faith  in  the  teaching  and  work  of  Christ 
may  have,  yea,  undoubtedly  have,  different  stages, 
and  may  be  in  one  stage  surer,  purer,  and  higher 
than  in  another.  All  belief  is  founded  on  supposed 
evidence,  and  all  legitimate  belief  is  founded  on  real 
evidence;  but  belief  may  be  legitimate  as  resulting 
from  real  evidence,  although  not  belief  of  the  high- 
est order, — belief  founded  on  the  most  appropriate 
and  conclusive  evidence.  We  ought  not,  however, 
to  regard  belief  as  spurious  and  false  merely  because 
it  is  of  an  inferior  kind.  If  we  apprehend  the  mean- 
ing of  a  mathematical  proposition  it  is  by  no  means 
indifferent  whether  we  believe  it  or  not,  even  should 
we  have  no  higher  ground  for  our  belief  than  the 
testimony  of  mathematicians.  Even  such  belief  is 
better  than  non-belief  or  disbelief.  The  evidence  on 
which  it  rests  is  good  evidence,  although  not  the  best. 
What  is  believed  is  true,  and  truth  is  always  greatly 
to  be  preferred  to  error. 

While,  however,  we  are  not  to  count  worthless 
any  sincere  belief  which  rests  on  any  real  evidence, 
neither  are  we  to  count  belief  in  a  lower  stage  equal 
to  belief  in  a  higher,  but  should  seek  to  be  conscious 
of  the  defects  in  all  faith  short  of  that  which  rests  on 
the  most  thorough  knowledge  attainable  of  what  is 
believed.  If  instead  of  so  doing  we  persist  in  taking 
an  inferior  kind  of  belief  as  belief  at  its  best,  or  the 
only  legitimate  sort  of  belief,  then  are  we  genuine 
agnostics,  seeing  that  we  reject  as  illusory  or  unat- 
tainable all  the  higher  knowledge  on  which  alone  a 

519 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  KELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

higher  faith  can  be  founded.  Were  a  man  fooHsh 
enough  to  maintain  that  belief  in  mathematical  prop- 
ositions should  only  rest  on  testimony,  he  would 
clearly  be  an  agnostic  in  mathematics,  however  well 
he  might  mean  towards  it,  inasmuch  as  he  denied  the 
attainability  of  all  knowledge  of  mathematics  from 
measurement  and  demonstration.  Of  course, ,  no 
person  is  so  foolish  in  regard  to  mathematics.  As  to 
religion,  however,  a  great  many  are  thus  foolish. 
There  are  some  who  pronounce  each  form  or  stage 
of  religious  faith  the  only  legitimate  or  reliable  one, 
and  who  discredit  and  reject  all  others.  Those  who 
do  so  often  have  the  best  intentions  towards  religion, 
but  their  good  intentions  should  not  prevent  us  from 
considering  them  as  agnostics,  or  from  deeming  them 
to  the  extent  of  their  agnosticism  dangerous  to  re- 
ligion, however  sincerely  friendly  to  it  they  may  be, 
and  although  their  religiousness  or  piety  need  not 
be  called  in  question. 

The  religious  non-agnostic  holds  that  religious  be- 
liefs ought  to  have  rational  bases,  to  be  adequately 
attested  as  true  by  appropriate  evidence,  and  so  to  be 
in  accordance  with  knowledge.  The  non-religious 
agnostic  holds  that  religious  beliefs  have  no  rational 
bases,  are  incapable  of  being  proved  true  by  satis- 
factory evidence,  and  are  not  found  to  be  accordant 
with  knowledge.  It  is  the  position  taken  up  by  the 
latter  which  here  concerns  us.  And  a  very  strange 
position  it  is,  and  seemingly  a  most  perilous  one  for 
the  agnostic  himself.  He  too  has  beliefs, — anti- 
rehgious  and  non-religious  beliefs.  How  does  he 
propose  to  justify  them?  Has  he  found  out  any  other 

520 


BASES    OF    BELIEF    AND    FAITH    VAKIOUS 

or  better  way  of  doing  so  than  the  way  in  which  the 
religious  non-agnostic  undertakes  to  justify  his  be- 
liefs, namely,  by  reason,  evidence,  and  knowledge? 
That  is  the  only  way  in  which  beliefs  of  any  kind  can 
be  justified.  Hence  the  agnostic  has  not  only  to  re- 
fute the  beliefs  of  the  non-agnostic  but  to  establish 
his  own,  although  he  can  only  do  so  on  non-agnostic 
principles.  To  the  whole  extent  of  his  agnosticism 
he  can  neither  consistently  refute  the  beliefs  of 
others  nor  justify  his  own,  and  when  a  fully  devel- 
oped agnostic  he  cannot  consistently  regard  any  basis 
of  knowledge  sure,  any  standard  of  truth  reliable, 
any  reasons  either  positively  or  negatively  conclu- 
sive. How  then  can  he  hope  in  the  least  for  success? 
Only  by  fancying  that  he  can  reduce  all  so-called 
knowledge  to  mere  belief,  or,  in  other  words,  can 
make  out  that  there  is  no  real  difference  between 
belief  and  knowledge.  It  is  well  known  how  Hume 
tried  to  prove  knowledge  ofily  exceptionally  viva- 
cious belief.  It  is  not  so  well  known  that  most  clear- 
sighted sceptics,  ancient  and  modern,  have  in  various 
ways  sought  to  do  the  same.  They  have  endeavoured 
to  represent  the  reference  of  belief  to  knowledge  as 
illusory,  on  the  ground  that  knowledge  itself  is  essen- 
tially identical  with  belief.  "Were  that  so,  all  seeming 
knowledge  would  really  be  mere  belief,  and  radical 
scepticism  might  fairly  claim  to  have  been  victorious. 
In  that  case  all  belief  would  rest  merely  on  itself, 
and  not  only  all  religion  and  theology,  but  also  all 
so-called  philosophy,  science,  and  ordinary  knowl- 
edge would  have  to  be  regarded  as  the  products  of 
credulity. 

521 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  KELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

What  the  radical  agnostic,  however,  is  logically 
bound  to  do,  cannot  rationally  be  done.  The  at- 
tempts made  to  do  it,  or  to  represent  it  as  done,  have 
necessarily  failed.  They  have  misrepresented  the 
clear  and  unequivocal  testimony  of  consciousness, 
dealt  freely  in  erroneous  descriptions  of  belief  and 
knowledge,  and  in  various  ways  so  abused  the  terms 
belief  and  knowledge  as  either  to  confound  the  facts 
which  they  denote,  or  erroneously  to  separate  and 
contrast  them.  Agnosticism  can  neither  disprove  that 
knowledge  and  belief  are  closely  and  indissolubly 
connected,  nor  that  they  are  manifestly  distinct. 
Knowledge  and  belief  are  indissolubly  connected, 
inasmuch  as,  although  we  can  believe  without  know- 
ing, we  cannot  know  without  believing.  To  say  that 
we  know  what  we  do  not  believe,  or  know  to  be  true 
what  we  believe  to  be  false,  or  even  what  we  cannot 
decide  whether  it  be  true  or  false,  is  to  say  what  is 
self -contradictory  and  nonsensical.  Wherever  there 
is  knowledge  there  is  belief,  and  the  knowledge  is  the 
rational  and  adequate  basis  of  the  belief,  the  only 
such  basis.  But  belief  is  far  more  extensive  than 
knowledge.  There  can  be  belief  where  there  is  no 
knowledge, — where  there  is  merely  the  supposition 
of  knowledge.  There  can  be  belief  where  there  are 
error,  ignorance,  illusion,  and  insanity.  Belief  is 
often — what  knowledge  never  is — a  holding  for  true 
that  which  is  false,  a  mistaking  for  accurate  percep- 
tions those  which  are  erroneous,  for  correct  judg- 
ments such  as  are  incorrect,  and  for  legitimate  proc- 
esses of  reasoning  more  or  less  manifest  fallacies. 
Knowledge  is  always  the  holding  for  true  what  is 

522 


BELIEF   NOT   BASED    ON   ITSELF 

true ;  and  the  true  is  that  which  is  the  expression  of 
external  or  internal,  physical  or  spiritual,  reality, 
and  which  is  valid,  not  for  one  mind  only,  but  for  all 
sane  minds.  The  bases  of  knowledge  are  our  mental 
activities  working  in  accordance  with  the  intuitions 
of  reason,  the  conditions  of  accurate  perception  and 
judgment,  and  the  laws  of  legitimate  inference. 
Mere  belief  is  not  the  basis.  No  mere  belief  is 
knowledge.  All  knowledge  properly  so  called  is  a 
good  foundation,  the  only  good  foundation,  for  be- 
lief. The  agnostic  can  neither  show  that  belief  is 
identical  with  knowledge  nor  that  knowledge  rests 
on  belief,  and  so  long  as  he  cannot  do  that  he  has  no 
right  to  profess  agnosticism. 

The  author  of  a  recent  and  interesting  treatise  on 
Knowledge,  Belief,  and  Certitude — F.  Storrs  Turner 
— has  arrived  at  the  conclusion  that  all  knowledge  is 
belief  thus.  "  All  knowledge,"  he  tells  us,  "  is  doubly 
dependent;  first  on  consciousness,  and  through  con- 
sciousness on  reality."  Then  he  asks,  "  Can  these 
two  axioms,  '  consciousness  never  deceives  us,'  '  nat- 
ure or  the  reality  never  deceives  us,'  be  proved?" 
And  his  answer  is,  "  Assuredly  not.  They  are  be- 
liefs. They  also  require  a  ground  or  reason.  Into 
the  question  of  the  ground  or  grounds  upon  which 
consciousness  and  reality  are  accepted  as  perfectly 
trustworthy,  it  is  not  necessary  to  enter  now,  for  we 
are  making  no  objection  to  belief  in  them.  The 
important  fact  for  us  is  that  knowledge  depends  upon 
these  axioms  for  its  own  existence.  Knowing  is  he- 
lieving.  There  is  no  other  way  of  knowing.  Whether 
there  is  any  believing  which  is  not  knowing  is  a  point 

523 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  KELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

which  may  remain  over  for  a  separate  considera- 
tion "  (p.  453). 

According  to  that  view,  knowledge  is  the  basis  of 
belief  and  belief  is  the  basis  of  knowledge,  so  that 
knowledge  lies,  as  it  were,  between  an  upper  and  an 
under  kind  of  belief,  and  at  once  supports  belief  and 
is  supported  by  it.  Such  a  view  does  not  appear  to 
be  at  all  consistent  with  an  admission  of  the  existence 
of  knowledge  properly  so  called.  'No  knowledge  rests 
on  mere  belief,  and  no  mere  belief,  no  belief  which 
does  not  to  some  extent  rest  on  knowledge,  comes 
into  contact  with  reality.  Then  is  it  not  an  abuse 
of  language  to  designate  the  two  propositions,  "  con- 
sciousness never  deceives  us,"  and  "  nature  or  the 
reality  never  deceives  us,"  axioms?  I  hold  that  it 
is,  and  even  question  their  right  to  be  considered 
reasonable  beliefs.  Who  believes  them?  Certainly 
they  are  not  axioms  in  any  proper  sense  of  the  term, 
but  the  crudest  of  generalisations.  Knowledge  and 
science  would  indeed  be  in  imminent  danger  had 
they  to  rely  on  such  pseudo-axioms  instead  of  on 
real  axioms  and  laws  of  thought,  like  the  principles 
of  causality,  of  identity,  of  contradiction,  of  excluded 
middle,  &c.,  on  the  immediate  introspective  and  per- 
ceptive powers  of  the  mind,  on  appropriate  methods 
of  research,  and  on  the  adequately  ascertained  and 
attested  truths  accumulated  in  past  ages.  Conscious- 
ness in  the  general  or  popular  sense  of  the  term  often 
deceives  us.  It  is  only  when  restricted  to  its  philo- 
sophical sense,  and  to  the  attestation  of  the  one  fuTi- 
damental  fact  that  "  along  with  whatever  is  known 
self  or  the  ego  is  necessarily  known,"  that  it  can  be 

584 


STORES    TURNER'S    VIEW 

truly  said  never  to  deceive  us,  and  then  it  is  mani- 
festly not  merely  belief  but  immediate  cognition. 
As  for  the  proposition  "  nature  or  reality  never  de- 
ceives us,"  to  say  that  reality  never  deceives  us  is 
just  to  say  that  reality  is  always  real,  or,  in  other 
words,  is  mere  tautology,  while  to  say  that  nature,  in 
any  reasonable  sense  of  the  term,  never  deceives  us,  is 
not  in  accordance  with  fact.  Merely  physical  nature, 
indeed,  cannot  deceive  in  the  same  sense  as  human 
nature  can  and  does,  but  even  it  is  full  of  illusions 
which  ordinary,  and  even  scientific  intelligence,  has 
much  difficulty  in  distinguishing  from  realities.  No 
jwet,  perhaps,  has  ever  admired  nature  more  than 
Wordsworth,  but  even  he  has  not  ventured  to  say 
more  than  that  "  she  never  doth  deceive  the  hearts 
of  those  who  love  her."  Animal  and  human  nature 
both  deceive  in  the  strictest  sense  of  the  term.  Many 
animals  are  adepts  in  deception,  and  entire  species  of 
them  would  soon  become  extinct  were  they  not.  A 
Hebrew  psalmist  confesses  to  have  said,  "  in  his  haste, 
all  men  are  liars."  The  question  has  been  asked. 
Might  he  not  have  said  so  at.  his  leisure  ?  It  might 
be  difficult  to  decide  whether  savage  or  civilised  men 
are  the  more  deceitful.  "  The  heart  of  man  " — human 
nature — says  Jeremiah,  "  is  deceitful  above  all 
things,"  and  that  is  a  much  better  generalisation  than 
Mr.  Turner's  "nature  never  deceives  us"  ;  but  neither 
the  one  nor  the  other  is  an  axiom  upon  which  knowl- 
edge depends  for  its  existence.  Knowing  implies  be- 
lieving, but  it  is  misleading  to  say  that  "  knowing  is 
believing,"  when  what  is  distinctive  of  knowing  is  the 
apprehension  and  acquisition  of  truth,  which  war- 

525 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  KELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

rants  believing,  and  produces  reasonable  belief.  That 
there  is  a  vast  amount  of  believing  which  is  not  know- 
ing will  not  be  found  to  call  for  any  special  considera- 
tion. Who  has  ever  met  with  a  man  who  does  not 
believe  more  than  he  knows  ? 

We  need  not  dwell  further  on  the  agnosticism 
which  by  identifying,  or  rather  confounding,  belief 
and  knowledge,  would  base  religion  on  a  belief  ex- 
clusive of  knowledge.  There  are,  however,  forms  of 
agnosticism — religious  agnosticism — which  rest  on 
different  grounds  of  belief,  and  these  have  now  to  be 
briefly  considered,  belief  in  Christianity,  as  already 
intimated,  being  taken  as  the  type  or  example  of 
belief. 

VIII.    EELIGIOUS    BELIEF   AND    TEANSMITTED    COMMON 
DOCTRINE  AND  GENERAL  CONSENT 

One  ground  on  which  religious  belief,  including 
belief  in  Christianity,  has  been  largely  rested  is  the 
authority  of  transmitted  common  doctrine  and  gen- 
eral consent.  Belief  at  that  stage  and  resting  on  that 
ground  has  so  firm  a  rational  basis  that  no  community 
ever  wholly  outgrows  it.  A  critical  sceptical  attitude 
of  mind  towards  the  views  and  sentiments  of  those 
with  whom  we  are  closely  associated  and  in  general 
sympathy  is  not  the  rule  but  the  exception.  When 
any  belief  or  system  of  belief  has  laid  hold  of  one 
generation  it  naturally  and  easily  passes  to  the  next. 
Were  it  otherwise  there  would  be  no  such  thing  as  a 
common  faith, — no  such  thing  as  national  creeds,  as 
Brahminism  in  India,  Mohammedanism  in  Turkey, 
Catholicism  in  Italy,  Lutheranism  in  Germany,  Pres- 

536 


TRADITIONAL    FACTOR   IN    BELIEF 

byterianism  in  Scotland,  &c.  Were  it  otherwise 
there  could  even  hardly  be  any  family,  social,  or 
religious  life  at  all.  To  some  extent  all  who  accept 
Christianity,  and  to  a  large  extent  the  great  majority 
of  those  who  do,  receive  it  because  the  belief  of  it 
prevails  throughout  the  community  into  which  they 
were  born  and  in  which  they  grew  up.  The  faith  of 
the  individual  is  always  in  some  measure  rooted  in 
and  determined  by  the  faith  of  the  community. 

Sceptics  have  often  made  use  of  that  fact  in  order 
to  discredit  religious  belief  and  Christian  faith.  But 
in  doing  so  they  have  generally  overlooked  two  closely 
related  facts.  The  first  of  them  is  that  scepticism 
itself  is  a  system  of  beliefs.  Its  disbeliefs  are  also 
beliefs.  And  the  disbeliefs  of  scepticism  are  in  many 
instances  as  much  due  to  the  action  of  social  tradition 
and  the  social  medium  as  the  beliefs  of  religious  com- 
munities. No  impartial  inquirer  can  come  to  any 
other  conclusion  as  to  the  beliefs  of  the  great  majority 
of  English  secularists  and  French  atheists.  The  in- 
fluence of  political  traditions  and  of  social  prejudices 
is  nowhere  more  manifest.  The  second  fact  to  which 
I  refer  is  that  what  is  true  of  religious  belief  with 
reference  to  religion  and  common  consent  is  largely 
true  also  of  what  is  called  scientific  belief.  The  gen- 
erality of  mankind  accept  the  results  of  science 
mainly  on  the  ground  that  scientists  are  agreed  in 
accepting  them,  and  that  public  opinion  is  in  accord- 
ance with  what  the  scientists  teach.  There  is  nothing 
unreasonable  in  accepting  scientific  truths  on  that 
ground  when  you  have  no  better  on  which  to  rely. 
The  common  consent  of  the  scientists  and  of  the  com- 

527 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

munity  is  a  fact  which  requires  to  Ix?  accounted  for, 
and  one  which  can  best  be  explained  on  the  supposi- 
tion that  it  is  well  founded.  The  general  belief  of 
chemists  and  other  physicists  in  the  atomic  theory  is 
only  intelligible  by  there  being  a  large  amount  of 
truth  in  it.  A  universal  and  continuous  assent  to  any 
proposition  is  prima  facie  a  strong  presumption  in 
favour  of  its  truth.  Widely  spread  and  long  preva- 
lent systems  of  belief  have  generally  a  large  amount 
of  reasonableness,  sufficient  to  account  in  no  small 
measure  for  the  extent  of  their  diffusion  and  the 
tenacity  with  which  they  are  clung  to. 

Our  two  chief  living  English  agnostics — Leslie 
Stephen  and  Herbert  Spencer — cannot  be  charged 
with  having  overlooked  the  significance  of  the  tradi- 
tional factor  in  belief.  Nor  have  they  undervalued 
it.  On  the  contrary,  both  of  them  have  made  such 
large  concessions  to  traditionalism  that  they  may  not 
unjustly  be  regarded  as  at  once  agnostics  and  tradi- 
tionalists. 

Mr.  Stephen's  ultimate  test  of  the  character  of 
opinion  or  doctrine  is  not  reason,  not  logic,  but  evo- 
lution in  the  natural  history  sense  of  the  term,  or  at 
least  in  the  Darwinian  sense  of  "  the  survival  of  the 
fittest."  The  belief  which  in  the  struggle  for  exist- 
ence overcomes  and  displaces  all  rival  beliefs  is  the 
fittest,  and,  therefore,  in  so  far  as  man  can  attain 
truth,  the  truest.  His  point  of  view  has  been  thus 
described  by  himself :  "  The  evolutionist  holds  that, 
in  the  struggle  for  existence,  the  truest  opinion  tends 
to  survive ;  and  thus,  that  whilst  no  generation  is  in 
possession  of  the  whole  trutli,  tlie  history  of  belief  is 

528 


STEPHEN   AND   NEWMAN'S   VIEWS 

that  of  a  slow  gravitation  towards  truth.  Some  doc- 
trines which  have  survived  all  changes,  and  strength- 
ened under  all  conditions,  may  be  definitely  estab- 
lished as  true,  or  at  least  as  indefinitely  close  approx- 
imations to  truth.  Others  are  disappearing,  or 
requiring  transformation.  By  studying  the  history  of 
opinion  from  this  point  of  view  we  may  obtain,  not  a 
self -subsisting  and  independent  system  of  philosophy, 
but  an  indispensable  guide  towards  further  approxi- 
mations. We  can  use  history  without  being  under  the 
tyranny  of  the  past.  We  can  value  the  postulates 
upon  which  men  have  acted  without  investing  them 
with  supernatural  authority." 

Such  is  the  point  of  view  from  which  Mr.  Stephen 
has  criticised  and  censured  J.  H.  Newman's  Theory 
of  Development.  And  so  far  as  regards  merely  the 
theory  of  Newman  his  criticism  of  it  seems  to  me 
conclusive  and  his  censure  just.  To  what,  however, 
does  he  owe  his  victory,  if  victory  it  be  ?  Solely,  I 
think,  to  his  theory  being  at  once  more  traditionalist 
and  more  sceptical  than  Newman's  own.  Newman 
very  largely  evaded  the  logical  question  as  to  truth. 
Mr.  Stephen  evades  it  wholly,  and  so  has  relatively 
to  Newman  the  consistency  of  completeness.  He  thus 
gains  the  right  to  charge  him  with  "  sanctioning  a 
method  of  playing  fast  and  loose  with  facts  which 
make  the  apparent  appeal  to  history  a  mere  illusion." 
Yet  his  own  theory  is  even  less  satisfactory.  It  is  a 
rash  assumption  to  accept  the  Darwinian  hypothesis 
of  "the  survival  of  the  fittest"  on  the  mere  character 
of  its  history.  The  chief  doctrines  of  religion  have 
had  a  far  more  solid  and  comprehensive  historical 

529 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  KELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

basis.  His  amalgamation  of  traditionalism  and  scep- 
ticism leaves  little  if  any  room  for  either  real  truth 
or  rationality. 

The  student  of  Mr.  Spencer's  writings  cannot  fail 
to  have  been  struck  with  the  poverty  of  his  argumen- 
tation against  religious  doctrine,  the  doctrine  of  the 
cognoscibility  of  God  alone  excepted,  which  he  attacks 
with  the  weapons  provided -by  Mansel.  For  the  re- 
jection of  theological  doctrines  and  religious  beliefs 
generally  the  one  argument  alone  and  always  in 
requisition  is  that  while  scientific  doctrines  are  con- 
stantly gaining  more  and  more  the  assent  of  men  and 
greater  and  greater  influence  over  them,  as  regards 
theological  doctrines  the  reverse  is  true.  In  his 
criticism  of  Mr.  Balfour's  Foundations  of  Belief  he 
represents  the  whole  conflict  between  his  own  philoso- 
phy and  Mr.  Balfour's  as  turning  on  that  thesis,  and 
to  be  decided  with  reference  to  it.  Any  impartial 
and  comprehensive  comparison  of  the  history  of  the- 
ology with  the  history  of  almost  any  other  science 
will  not  fail  to  show  that  the  existence  of  the  contrast 
on  which  Mr.  Spencer  would  hazard  the  fate  of  his 
philosophy  is  a  mere  imagination.  Theistic  doctrine 
judged  of  by  its  history  is  at  least  as  strongly  pre- 
sumptive of  its  being  true,  of  its  being  inexplicable 
on  the  supposition  of  its  falsity,  as  any  corresponding 
doctrine  judged  of  by  the  same  standard. 

There  are  two  opposite  extremes  of  opinion  as  to 
the  function  and  worth  of  tradition  in  religion,  a 
depreciatory  and  an  exaggerated  view  of  its  influence 
and  value.  Protestantism,  although  it  has  practically 
accepted  tradition,  has  done  so  half-heartedly,  and 

530 


CATHOLIC  AND  PROTESTANT  EXTREMES 

tends  to  the  former  view.  Protestants  often  hold 
crude  and  exaggerated  conceptions  of  private  judg- 
ment. Catholics  are  apt  to  entertain  as  crude  and 
exaggerated  conceptions  regarding  a  common  consent 
which  rests  on  passively  accepted  tradition.  All  re- 
ligious belief  of  much  worth  is  now  largely  tradi- 
tional, just  as  all  scientific  belief  is.  The  whole  of 
Christendom  has  inherited  far  the  greater  portion 
both  of  its  religion  and  of  its  science  from  the  past, 
and  is  no  more  entitled  to  scoff  at  its  traditional  re- 
ligion than  at  its  traditional  science. 

We  have  no  right  to  suppose  that  those  who  inherit 
Christianity  are  Christians  merely  because  they  have 
inherited  it ;  that  they  have  no  insight  into  its  truth ; 
that  they  have  wholly  failed  to  verify  the  faith  in 
which  they  acquiesce.  There  may  be  such,  many 
such — many  who  believe  simply  because  others  be- 
lieve and  just  what  others  believe.  But  obviously  all 
such  are  unworthy  of  the  great  gift  which  history  and 
tradition  have  brought  them,  and  what  faith  they  have 
is  of  a  low  and  imperfect  kind.  The  value  of  the 
traditional  in  religion  becomes  fully  apparent  only 
when  conjoined  with,  not  when  exclusive  of,  the  per- 
sonal. The  thought  and  experience  of  the  race  is 
due  to  the  exertions  of  the  individuals  composing  it, 
and  the  success  of  individual  exertions  has  been  made 
possible  owing  to  the  vast  wealth  of  thought  and  ex- 
perience with  which  tradition  is  freighted.  Those 
who  inherit  Christianity  are  not  to  be  assumed  to  be 
Christians  merely  because  they  have  inherited  it  and 
been  told  that  it  was  true.  It  is  no  more  than  justice 
to  suppose  that  in  almost  all  cases  there  has  been  to 

531 


AGNOSTICISM   AS   TO    RELIGIOUS   BELIEF 

some  extent  insight  into  the  truth  of  what  they 
were  taught  and  verification  of  the  faith  in  which 
they  acquiesce,  and  that  in  not  a  few  cases  there 
has  been  a  careful  examination  of  the  common 
creed. 

There  is,  however,  it  must  be  granted,  a  stage  of 
faith  in  which  the  individual  is  excessively  and  slav- 
ishly dej)endent  on  the  community  and  its  beliefs  and 
traditions.  At  that  stage  men  believe  for  the  most 
part  just  because  others  believe  and  just  what  others 
believe.  It  should  be  obvious,  one  would  think,  that 
that  must  be  a  low  and  imperfect  stage.  Faith  ought 
to  be  personal  and  active ;  ought  to  have  some  better 
reason  to  give  for  itself  than  that  others  share  it. 
If  those  who  agree  in  a  faith  have  no  other  reason  for 
it  than  that  they  agree,  the  dependence  of  each  upon 
all  is  obviously  one  in  which  reason  has  extremely 
little  share  indeed..  Yet  it  is  a  fact  that  the  attempt 
has  been  made  to  represent  such  impersonal  and  pas- 
sive faith — such  believing  simply  because  others  be- 
lieve— as  the  sole  type  of  true  faith;  and  common 
belief,  common  consent,  as  the  criterion,  or  at  least 
the  primary  criterion,  of  all  truth,  and  especially  of 
religious  truth.  For  example,  a  resolute  and  sus- 
tained effort  of  the  kind  was  made  in  the  early  part 
of  last  century  by  a  band  of  French  thinkers,  some  of 
whom  possessed  eminent  intellectual  and  literary 
gifts.  Philosophy  and  theology  are  indebted  to  them 
for  having  done  so  much  to  make  the  influence  of  the 
social  medium  on  the  individual  sufficiently  realised 
at  a  time  when  a  disintegrating  empiricism  was  prev- 
alent.   To  an  irreligious  and  exaggerated  individual- 

532 


DE   BONALD    AND   DE   LAMENNAIS 

ism  they  opposed  a  religious  but  unfortunately  also 
exaggerated  traditionalism. 

De  Bonald  and  De  Lamennais  were  its  ablest  phil- 
osophical representatives.  The  Essai  sur  V Indif- 
ference dans  la  Matiere  de  Religion  of  the  latter  is 
the  most  earnest,  impassioned,  and  eloquent  attempt 
ever  made  to  found  a  doctrine  of  traditionalism  on 
sceptical  bases.  In  that  work  De  Lamennais  was  not 
content  merely  to  argue  that  all  modern  philosophy 
was  radically  vicious  and  tended  inevitably  to  scepti- 
cism, but  he  insisted  that  the  individual  reason  was 
necessarily  doomed  to  find  only  error,  and  to  wander 
in  darkness  until  it  renounced  itself  by  an  act  of 
faith  in  tradition  and  the  self-sacrifice  of  individual 
opinion  to  catholic  or  common  consent.  He  employed 
all  the  chief  arguments  of  scepticism  against  the 
senses,  against  the  sentiments  and  the  reasonings,  of 
those  who  deemed  truth  and  certitude  attainable  by 
the  self-activity  of  individual  minds.  He  refused  to 
admit  that  we  are  even  of  ourselves  sure  that  we 
feel.  He  rejected  the  testimony  of  self-consciousnesg, 
and  maintained  that  just  because  based  on  that  hope- 
lessly false  foundation  all  the  systems  of  thought  de- 
vised during  the  previous  four  centuries  had  contra- 
dicted and  destroyed  one  another,  leaving,  as  they 
passed  in  rapid  succession,  scarcely  a  wrack  behind, 
yet  each  pushing  humanity  onwards  towards  the 
abyss  of  universal  scepticism.  The  wise  man  falsely 
so  called  of  the  modem  world  had  all  alike  in  his 
estimation  started  from  the  individual  consciousness 
as  a  first  and  sure  principle,  and  had  differed  only  as 
to  which  of  its  forms,  as  to  what  capacity  of  the  mind, 

533 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

what  faculty  of  the  conscious  being,  should  be  sup- 
posed to  have  in  it  the  supreme  criterion  of  certainty, 
— whether  sense,  or  feeling,  or  reason.  He  affirmed 
that  the  principle  from  which  they  started  was  false, 
and  maintained  that  the  criterion  of  truth  is  to  be 
found  in  none  of  its  forms,  in  no  faculty  of  the  mind ; 
that  the  only  criterion  of  our  senses,  of  our  feelings, 
of  our  judgments  and  inferences,  being  true,  is  that 
they  agree  in  their  deliverances  with  those  of  others. 
The  individual  lives  merely  with  the  life  of  the  race. 
All  true  thought  is  transmitted  belief.  The  individ- 
ual is  dependent  for  his  intelligence,  its  operations 
so  far  as  legitimate,  and  its  conclusions — religious, 
political,  moral,  and  social — so  far  as  true,  on  tradi- 
tion flowing  from  a  primitive  revelation,  which  per- 
vades the  ages,  and  of  which  the  Catholic  Church  is 
alone  the  custodian  and  interpreter. 

Such  was  the  central  conception  of  the  theory  which 
De  Lamennais  expounded  with  a  passionate  earnest- 
ness and  a  magnificent  eloquence  which  for  a  time 
greatly  stirred  and  roused  the  Catholic  Church.  The 
defectiveness  and  self-contradictoriness  of  it,  how- 
ever, are  very  obvious.  The  attack  on  the  trust- 
worthiness of  the  human  faculties  and  of  even  the 
surest  criteria  of  truth  was  manifestly  unwise.  An 
indiscriminate  and  unsparing  assault  on  all  the  pri- 
mary principles  of  human  thought  and  on  all  modern 
philosophy  and  science  could  only  end  in  speedy  and 
utter  failure,  and  necessarily  discredited  the  whole 
theory  which  gave  rise  to  it.  A  scepticism  so  extreme 
is  self-destructive.  If  tradition  be  as  worthless  in 
regard  to  philosophy  and  science  as  De  Lamennais 

534 


SCEPTICISM  OF  DE  LAMENNAIS 

maintained,  it  may  fairly  be  inferred  to  be  also  as 
worthless  in  regard  to  Catholic  religion  and  theol- 
ogy. The  kind  of  argumentation  which  he  employed 
could  be  applied  as  logically  and  effectively  against 
the  tradition  which  he  retained  and  commended  as 
against  that  which  he  rejected  and  condemned. 
Further,  general  consent  can  have  no  worth  if  the 
individual  assents  of  which  it  is  composed  have  none. 
Multiplying  zeros  will  never  make  a  positive  sum. 
No  addition  or  elaboration  of  errors  will  result  in 
truth.  By  one's  own  individual  reason  to  seek  to 
prove,  as  De  Lamennais  did,  that  individual  reason 
is  wholly  fallacious  is  so  manifestly  a  fallacious  exer- 
cise of  reason  as  to  prove  nothing  about  reason  ex- 
cept that  it  may  be  greatly  abused.  Besides,  no  man 
can  wholly  renounce  his  own  reason  and  accept  in- 
stead common  consent  or  collective  reason.  The 
individual  can  only  attain  to  what  he  individually 
thinks  to  be  that  consent  or  reason,  and  in  that  he 
may  be  as  much  mistaken  as  in  any  of  his  other 
thoughts.  There  came  a  day  in  the  life  of  De  La- 
mennais when,  although  he  was  firmly  convinced  that 
the  common  consent,  consciousness,  or  reason  of 
mankind  attested  the  truth  of  a  certain  doctrine,  the 
Pope  was  convinced  that  it  did  not,  and  declared  the 
doctrine  a  heresy.  The  result  was  that  De  Lamen- 
nais, who  had  been  called  "  the  last  of  the  Fathers  " 
and  "  a  second  Bossuet,"  who  had  refused  the  offer 
of  a  bishopric  and  the  dignity  of  the  cardinalate, 
found  himself  an  outcast  from  the  Church  which  he 
had  so  passionately  loved.  Consent,  even  if  uni- 
versal  to   tradition,    although    uninterrupted,    is,    I 

535 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

would  add,  only  worthy  of  respect  when  produced 
by  evidence,  and  then  it  indicates  that  the  truths 
assented  to  are  either  self-evident  or  very  evident — 
very  simple  and  clear.  It  does  not  otherwise  really 
rest  on  the  truth  of  what  is  believed.  On  the  con- 
trary, it  assumes  that  the  truth  itself  cannot  be  di- 
rectly, personally,  truly  known.  It  is,  therefore,  an 
essentially  low  form  of  belief,  and  can  only  justify 
itself  theoretically  against  a  higher  faith  by  agnostic 
unbelief, 

IX.   RELATION   OF  CHAEACTEE  TO   HISTOEY  OF  BELIEF 

The  character  of  a  belief,  it  may  be  supposed,  will 
be  best  attested  by  its  history.  "  By  their  fruits  ye 
shall  know  them  "  is  a  maxim  applicable  to  beliefs 
and  systems  of  belief  as  well  as  to  individuals  and 
societies.  Hence  it  is  not  surprising  that  many  at- 
tempts have  been  made  both  to  justify  and  to  dis- 
credit religious  beliefs  and  religious  systems  by  the 
nature  of  their  influence  on  the  lives  of  individuals 
and  the  condition  of  communities.  With  those  at- 
tempts I  shall  not  deal,  but  I  must  express  my  con- 
viction that  religious  belief  and  Christian  faith 
cannot  in  any  form  be  either  satisfactorily  proved  or 
disproved  merely  hy  any  history  of  religious  belief  or 
of  the  development  of  Christian  faith.  All  religious 
belief,  indeed,  has  a  history,  and  an  instructive  his- 
tory, but  its  history  is  only  history,  and  its  truth 
must  always  have  some  further  attestation  than  the 
history.  When  any  justification  of  such  belief  is 
attempted  the  history  requires  at  every  point  and 
stage  not  merely  to  be  ascertained  ^s  fact  but  judged 

536 


CHARACTER   AND    BELIEF   HISTORICALLY 

of  by  reason  and  conscience.  So  every  Christian 
*  doctrine  and  Christian  creed  have  a  history,  but  the 
history  is  in  each  case  of  itself  insufficient  to  estab- 
lish the  truth  of  the  doctrine  or  creed.  It  is  too 
fragmentary  or  dubious,  too  complex  and  confused, 
too  capable  of  being  interpreted  in  various  and  di- 
vergent ways,  to  do  so.  Hume's  Natural  History  of 
Religion  and  Newman's  Theory  of  Development  are 
very  able  and  suggestive  works;  but  the  attempt 
made  in  the  former  to  show  the  irrationality  of  re- 
ligion and  the  attempt  made  in  the  latter  to  justify 
the  claims  of  Catholicism  are  both  futile.  Hume  in 
order  to  reach  his  conclusion  had  to  ignore  the  opera- 
tion of  reason  and  the  power  of  truth  in  the  forma- 
tion of  belief,  and  to  leave  unexplained  intellectual, 
moral,  and  spiritual  progress  in  the  sphere  of  re- 
ligion. That,  however,  is  a  prodigious  defect,  and 
makes  his  so-called  Natural  History  of  Religion  very 
unnatural  indeed.  Newman  in  order  to  give  plausi- 
bility to  his  theory  of  religious  development  had  to 
begin  by  postulating  the  existence  of  an  infallible 
authority  outside  of  the  development  to  distinguish 
the  false  from  the  true  in  it.  Obviously  that  should 
not  have  been  postulated  but  proved.  He  further 
selected  and  manipulated  the  facts  of  history  to  make 
them  suit  a  foregone  conclusion.  For  example,  he 
excluded  from  consideration  the  great  ethnic  relig- 
ions, although  some  of  them  had  dominated  the 
minds  of  far  more  millions  for  more  centuries  than 
Christianity  itself  had  done.  For  proceeding  so  he 
had  recourse  to  the  plea  of  the  superiority  of  the 
civilisation  of  Western  Europe  over  Oriental  civilisa- 

637 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

tion.  Yet  he  was  careful  not  to  take  into  account 
the  higher  and  healthier  civilisation  of  Protestant 
as  compared  with  Catholic  nations.  The  lack  of  his- 
torical impartiality  vitiates  his  whole  theory. 

To  me  it  seems  that  no  mere  history  of  belief  or 
theory  of  its  development  can  of  itself  certify  the 
truth  of  belief.  Any  argument  even  for  the  truth  of 
Christianity  drawn  merely  from  its  history  must  be 
very  inadequate.  To  prove  that  Christianity  as  a 
system  of  religious  belief  has  existed  and  grown 
through  ages,  spread  over  many  lands,  and  been  the 
source  of  a  rich,  varied,  and  vast  civilisation;  that 
its  development  has  been  continuous  and  consistent; 
that  its  power  and  influence  have  been  immense  and 
to  a  large  extent  beneficent  both  to  individuals  and 
communities  is,  I  fully  recognise,  not  only  a  valid 
argument  for  Christianity,  but  rightly  stated  and 
adequately  worked  out  may  be  a  very  powerful  and 
valuable  one.  Works  like  Loring  Brace's  Gesta 
Christi,  Dr.  Storr's  Divine  Origin  of  Christianity 
indicated  by  its  Historical  Effects,  and  Principal 
Fairbairn's  Religion  in  History  and  the  Life  of  To- 
day, fully  merit  the  welcome  which  they  have  re- 
ceived. The  historical  argument,  however,  needs  to 
be  supported  and  supplemented  by  other  modes  of 
proof.  It  is  only  a  secondary  and  indirect  argument, 
and  cannot  deal  immediately  with  the  truth  itself 
but  only  with  its  external  effects.  It  is  greatly  to  be 
regretted  that  in  Ritschlian  expositions  of  Christian 
Apologetics  the  historical  argument  is  often  virtu- 
ally the  only  one  to  be  found.  An  Apologetic  so 
"  cribbed,  cabined,  and  confined  "  within  the  limits 

538 


BELIEF  IN  RELATION  TO   AUTHORITY 

of  historical  experience  cannot  but  prove  very  inad- 
equate. It  must  fail  to  bring  the  mind  into  suiR- 
ciently  close  contact  with  spiritual  truth  itself, — with 
the  eternal,  the  supernatural,  and  Divine. 

X.   BELIEF  IN  RELATION  TO  AUTHORITY.      FORMS  OF  RE- 
LIGIOUS  AUTHORITY 

Another  stage  of  religious  belief  is  that  in  which 
belief  is  rested  on  authority.  It  is  the  stage  in  which 
men  accept  spiritual  truths  not  because  they  appre- 
hend them  by  the  exercise  of  their  own  faculties  but 
because  they  are  enjoined  on  them  by  others  in  whom 
they  have  confidence  and  on  whom  they  feel  them- 
selves dependent.  Authority  is  not  to  be  confounded 
with  mere  power  or  arbitrary  will — such  power  as 
does  not  rest  on  reason  and  refuses  to  give  reason^. 
The  exercise  of  mere  power  or  will  over  others  is  des- 
potism or  tyranny — an  abuse  of  power  or  will — in 
those  who  possess  it,  and  implies  the  slavery  and  deg- 
radation of  those  who  are  subjected  to  it.  Authority 
is  clearly  distinguishable  therefrom.  It  is  the  right 
of  an  individual  or  society  to  be  believed  or  obeyed 
on  account  of  reasons  in  whole  or  in  part  springing 
from  the  character  or  position  of  the  individual  or 
society — i.e.,  from  reasons  not  intrinsic  to  the  com- 
mands given  or  claims  made.  Authority  thus  under- 
stood is  unquestionably  legitimate  and  necessary  with 
reference  both  to  the  control  of  external  conduct  and 
the  guidance  of  opinion.  Society  could  not  be  consti- 
tuted, preserved,  and  developed  without  the  exercise 
of  authority  in  both  forms. 

Faith  in  all  great  religions  has  been  spread  largely 
539 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

by  authority  as  well  as  by  reason.  Belief  in  Christi- 
anity is  no  exception  to  the  rule.  Christ  sought  to 
gain  belief  in  Himself  as  the  condition  of  belief  in 
His  doctrine  and  of  obedience  to  His  commands.  He 
made  unparalleled  claims  to  personal  authority.  The 
Apostles  spoke  as  men  having  authority  in  virtue  of 
a  Divine  commission.  St.  Paul  has  written  so  em- 
phatically against  the  sinfulness  of  resistance  to  civil 
authority  (Rom.  xiii.  1-5)  as  to  have  given  plausibil- 
ity to  the  teaching  of  those  divines  who,  in  England 
and  elsewhere,  have  argued  that  all  active  resistance 
to  civil  authority  is  disobedience  to  God.  When  the 
clergy  of  the  Christian  Church  had  providentially 
devolved  upon  them  the  immense  task  of  guiding  and 
ruling  the  minds,  first  of  the  debased  populations  of 
Asia,  Greece,  and  Rome,  and  then  of  the  rude  bar- 
barians who  overthrew  the  Roman  Empire,  it  was 
most  natural  that  they  should  have  thought  that  they 
could  not  have  too  much  authority  on  the  side  of  what 
they  believed  to  be  truth,  and  should  have  striven  to 
exalt  as  much  as  they  could  the  authority  which  they 
deemed  to  be  a  religious  and  social  necessity.  Nor 
can  it  be  justly  denied  that,  grievous  as  were  the  er- 
rors into  which  the  medieval  Church  fell  in  conse- 
quence of  its  undue  reliance  on  the  principle  of  au- 
thority, it  was  also  enabled  by  means  of  it  to  perform 
wonderful  services  to  religion  and  humanity.  No 
modern  Church  is  yet  great  enough  to  despise  the 
medieval  Church — the  Church  which,  with  all  its 
faults,  was  by  far  the  mightiest  and  most  beneficent 
agent  in  the  formation  of  Christendom  out  of  bar- 
barism and  confusion. 

540 


VALUE   A^D   INFLUENCE    OF   AUTHORITY 

The  influence  of  authority  has  not  yet  ceased  in  the 
Christian  world.  Christianity  has  still  no  hesitation, 
no  shame,  in  making  use  of  the  authority  of  parents, 
teachers,  and  rulers,  in  order  to  impress  and  mould 
to  its  purposes  the  souls  of  the  youngest,  simplest, 
and  least  educated.  Nor  are  we  entitled  to  infer  that 
authority  has  only  a  transitory  value,  and  will  grad- 
ually disappear  with  the  progress  of  enlightenment 
and  freedom.  So  long  as  there  are  social  beings  and 
social  relationships,  authority  would  seem  to  be  in- 
dispensable. Only  anarchists,  indeed,  dream  that  all 
human  and  social  authority  is  hurtful,  unjust,  and 
doomed  to  disappear.  But  anarchists  are  generally 
atheists,  blind  to  the  fact  that  there  is  a  God,  a  God 
not  of  disorder  but  of  order,  Avhose  right  to  authority 
will  never  diminish,  and  whose  authority  may  well 
be  expected  to  be  a  perpetual  source  of  authority  in 
subordinate  forms.  History  shows  us  all  forms  of 
human  authority  varying  and  continually  compelled 
to  adjust  their  claims  to  those  of  personal  freedom, 
equity,  and  reason,  but  it  does  not  show  us  that  in  any 
of  its  forms  it  is  tending  towards  extinction.  There 
is  no  essential  antagonism,  it  must  be  remembered, 
between  authority  and  freedom,  authority  and  reason, 
authority  and  duty.  They  are  to  be  co-ordinated,  not 
contrasted.  To  combine  and  harmonise  them  ought 
to  be  one  of  the  aims  of  human  life.  To  regard  and 
treat  them  as  naturally  antagonistic  has  been  the 
source  of  much  error  and  mischief. 

The  principle  of  authority  as  it  manifests  itself  on 
earth  is  always  a  partial  truth,  and  its  value  is  always 
relative  and  limited.     Li  the  domain  of  Christianity 

541 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

it  appears  in  three  forms — namely,  as  (1)  Personal 
Authority,  (2)  Authority  of  the  Church,  and  (3) 
Authority  of  Scripture. 

(1)  By  personal  authority  I  refer  here  to  merely 
human  authority.  That  authority  is  obviously  only 
relative  and  limited.  It  is  a  means,  and  not  an  end. 
It  is  only  legitimate  when  it  supplements  the  defects 
of  a  reason  which  is  weak  and  faltering,  and  encour- 
ages it  to  learn  to  exercise  its  own  God-given  powers 
in  humble  dependence  on  Divine  aid.  It  is  a  hurtful 
tyranny  when  it  seeks  to  prolong  its  own  sway,  in- 
stead of  honestly  endeavouring  to  make  itself  as  little 
necessary  as  possible.  Christian  faith  is  a  faith 
which  rests  on  actual  apprehension  and  experience  of 
Christian  truth,  not  a  faith  which  passively  accepts 
what  it  is  told  to  be  Christian  truth.  It  is  a  faith 
which  has  God  and  Christ  and  eternal  life  for  its  im- 
mediate and  direct  objects,  not  a  faith  which  has  to 
do  with  divine  realities  merely  through  the  mediation 
of  certain  official  persons.  The  officials  in  religious 
societies  have,  of  course,  like  the  officials  in  other  so- 
cieties, rights  to  be  respected  as  well  as  duties  to  per- 
form, but  they  are  not  lords  over  God's  heritage  nor 
the  masters  of  men's  reasons  or  consciences.  They 
have  no  other  right  to  religious  authority  than  what 
superiority  in  religious  knowledge,  or  in  virtue  or 
piety,  may  give  them.  A  clergyman  as  regards  mat- 
ters of  religion  may  be  expected  to  be  a  sort  of  expert 
in  his  sphere,  as  physicians,  lawyers,  and  scientists 
are  in  theirs,  and  if  so,  he  is  entitled  to  an  analogous 
authority,  but  not  to  a  specifically  different  kind  of 
authority.    The  officials  of  a  religious  society  are  not 

542 


PERSONAL  AND   CHURCH   AUTHaRITY 

entitled  to  deprive  its  members  of  spiritual  rights  in- 
herent in  their  very  humanity,  and  to  demand  from 
them  a  blind  faith  or  an  unreasoned  obedience.  All 
legitimate  authority  rests  on  reasons,  and  is  willing 
to  have  its  claims  submitted  to  examination.  There 
is  no  arrogance  in  examining  the  claims  of  any  mere- 
ly earthly  authority,  spiritual  or  temporal;  on  the 
contrary,  such  examination  is,  as  a  rule,  the  discharge 
of  a  manifest  duty.  Yet  so  late  as  July,  1870,  an 
oecumenical  council  of  a  Christian  Church  was  found 
to  declare  the  personal  infallibility,  as  a  dogmatic 
authority,  of  its  official  head.  Perhaps  no  more  fool- 
ish an  act  was  committed  in  the  nineteenth  century. 
It  was  one  which  can  be  of  no  real  service  even  to  the 
Catholic  Church,  and  which,  I  fear,  has  destroyed  all 
reasonable  hope  of  a  reunited  Christendom.  That 
the  dogma  had  no  warrant  in  reason,  revelation,  or 
history  was  clearly  proved  by  the  leaders  of  the  mi-  i  nj 

nority  in  the  Vatican  Council  itself;  but  the  powers      ^,  i   '  /   |j 
of  light  failed  to  dispel  the  dense  darkness  and  folly        -    ■ 
of  the  majority  of  its  members. 

(2)  Religious  belief  may  also  be  based  on  the  au- 
thority of  the  Church.  Any  Church  as  represented 
by  its  officials  may  rightly  claim  some  measure  of  au- 
thority as  regards  both  doctrine  and  discipline.  It 
could  not  otherwise  be  an  organised  society.  That  a 
Church  should  have  authority  is  inseparable  from  its 
having  a  creed  and  constitution.  No  Church,  how- 
ever, is  entitled  to  claim  to  be  an  absolute  or  ultimate 
authority.  A  Church  ought  always  to  be  prepared 
to  lay  its  claims  to  authority  before  the  bar  of 
reason.    It  is  a  fair  question  for  any  one  to  ask,  Why 

543 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

should  I  believe  what  the  Church  teaches  ?  But  it  is 
also  a  very  hard  question  for  any  Church  which 
claims  absolute  lordship  over  faith  to  answer  consist- 
ently with  any  show  of  reasonableness.  Is  it  replied 
that  what  the  Church  teaches  may  be  seen  and  felt 
by  the  mind  to  be  true, — that  what  it  declares  can  be 
independently  verified  ?  Then,  in  that  case,  the  mind 
does  not  really  believe  on  the  authority  of  the  Church 
but  on  the  authority  of  reason  and  experience;  in 
other  words,  it  can  judge  the  Church,  and  determine 
whether  the  Church  teaches  the  truth  or  not,  inde- 
pendently of  the  mere  word  of  the  Church.  He  who 
so  recognises,  however,  the  truth  of  what  the  Church 
teaches  has  obtained  independence  of  the  Church, 
and  can  no  longer  award  the  liighest  place  to  eccle- 
siastical authority  but  to  the  Divine  might  of  truth. 
The  Church  becomes  in  that  case  simply  a  witness  of 
truth,  without  any  right  to  affix  the  stamp  of  truth 
on  whatever  she  is  pleased  to  teach.  The  answer  in- 
dicated, therefore,  cannot  be  consistently  given. 

May  a  Church,  then,  boldly  claim  to  have  her  mere 
word  accepted  as  the  truth, — ^to  have  her  assertions 
accepted  simply  because  they  are  hers?  That  may 
seem  to  be  the  only  consistent  position  for  the  Catho- 
lic Church  to  take  up,  and  some  of  her  own  teachers 
have  taken  their  stand  upon  it.  But  it  requires  great 
audacity  thus  to  demand  an  implicit  unreasoning 
faith,  and  even  the  Catholic  Church  has  not  ventured 
to  maintain  that  what  she  affirms  must  be  accepted 
entirely  in  trust  on  her  word — i.e.,  without  any  kind 
of  intelligent  verification.  The  opinion  that  a  ])lind 
faith  m  the  mere  word  of  the  Church  is  a  funda- 

544 


AUTHORITY  AND  THE  CATHOLIC  CHURCH 

mental  doctrine  of  Catholicism  was,  in. fact,  expressly 
condemned  by  Pius  IX.  himself.  An  able  and,  I 
imagine,  representative  Catholic  theologian.  Dr. 
Schanz  of  Tiibingen,  writes  thus :  "  A  man  must 
hold  before  he  can  accept  with  safety  the  authority 
of  the  Church  these  seven  preliminary  truths — ^the 
existence  of  God,  the  possibility  of  revelation,  the 
fact  of  revelation,  the  history  of  the  Old  Testament 
as  substantially  genuine,  the  substantially  authentic 
character  of  the  IS^ew  Testament,  the  Deity  of  Christ, 
the  institution  of  an  enduring  Apostolate.  A  man 
must  be  in  reason  satisfied  about  these  points  before 
surrendering  his  mind  to  the  dogma  of  the  infallibil- 
ity of  the  Church — unless,  indeed,  he  clearly  sees  a 
way  of  establishing  the  Divine  authority  of  the  !N^ew 
Testament  Scriptures.  Catholic  theologians,  then,  no 
more  claim  of  themselves  the  right  of  assuming  the 
authority  of  the  Church  than  Protestants  may  claim 
the  right  of  the  inspiration  and  Divine  authority  of 
the  Bible."  ^  Well,  those  words  are,  I  think,  very 
true ;  but  if  true,  does  it  not  follow  that  if  men  are 
able  to  know  so  much  as  is  affirmed,  they  cannot,  if 
they  seek  spiritual  truth  as  they  ought  to  do,  be  so 
largely  dependent  on  the  Church  as  the  Church  often 
endeavours  to  make  them  believe?  Does  not  the 
Church,  and  especially  the  Catholic  Church,  ask  men 
to  believe  an  enormous  deal  about  religion  not  on  the 
ground  that  they  can  know  the  truth  thereof  if  they 
will  only  seek  it,  but  on  the  ground  that  they  cannot 
so  know  it,  and  must  therefore  believe  what  their 
teachers  tell  them?     To  one  who  holds  that  faith 

>  Christian  Apology,  vol.  iii.,  Pref.,  xvi,  xrii  (E.  T.) 
545 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  EELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

should  be  founded  on  knowledge  and  conformed  to 
knowledge  that  procedure  is  manifestly  agnostic,  and 
any  Church  adopting  it  is  responsible  for  the  spread 
of  agnosticism.  The  way  in  which  the  Catholic 
Church  has  exalted  authority  has  assuredly  involved 
a  denial  to  her  members  of  powers  of  knowing  Di- 
^  vine  truth  with  which  they  ought  to  have  been  cred- 

ited, and  the  exercise  of  which  would  have  made  them 
far  less  dependent  on  churchly  authority  than  they 
have  been  or  ought  to  be.  Hence  it  is  only  natural 
that  there  should  have  often  appeared  among  her 
clergy  agnostics  of  a  very  pronounced  type.  With 
such  agnostics  she  has  had  much  trouble  in  the  way 
of  preventing  them  from  compromising  her  by  the  ex- 
cesses to  which  they  were  inclined  to  go  in  the  glori- 
fication of  faith  at  the  expense  of  reason.  Most  of 
them  she  has  prevailed  on  to  retract.  Her  own  in- 
trinsically agnostic  relationship  to  religion  she  has 
shown  neither  inclination  nor  ability  to  alter, 

(3)  The  faith  in  Christianity  which  rests  merely 
or  mainly  on  the  authority  of  the  Church  is  so  im- 
mature and  inconsistent,  that  it  must  of  necessity  be 
outgrown  wherever  mental  development  is  not  ar- 
rested. That  was  made  apparent  on  a  great  scale  at 
the  epoch  of  the  Reformation.  The  authority  of  the 
Church  was  then  recognised  by  the  most  earnest  and 
thoughtful  portion  of  the  Christian  world  to  be,  not- 
withstanding all  pretensions  to  the  contrary,  merely 
human  authority.  The  deference  which  had  been 
yielded  to  it  was  clearly  seen  to  have  been  supersti- 
tious and  debasing.  From  the  word  of  those  who 
claimed  to  speak  for  the  Church  men  turned  to  the 

546 


AUTHOEITY  OF  THE  BIBLE 

Bible  as  the  word  of  God,  and  in  doing  so  found 
strength  and  support.  The  word  of  the  priest  lost  its 
power  to  enslave  and  terrify  when  the  Bible  as  the 
written  word  of  God  was  appealed  to  in  opposition 
to  it.  The  Reformation  rested  very  largely  on  the 
substitution  of  one  authority  for  another, — on  the 
transference  of  the  seat  of  religious  authority  from 
the  Church  to  the  Scriptures.  All  the  leading  Re- 
formers were  at  one  in  striving  to  get  the  Bible  fully 
recognised  as  the  supreme  accessible  spiritual  author- 
ity. It  was  in  the  Bible  that  they  sought  for  the  sub- 
stance of  their  preaching.  It  was  from  the  Bible 
that  they  endeavoured  to  evolve  their  creeds.  It  was 
by  references  to  the  Bible  that  they  undertook  to 
defend  all  the  articles  of  those  creeds.  There,  then, 
was  another  stage  of  faith, — the  stage  in  which  faith 
rests  on  the  Bible  as  God's  word.  But  faith  may  rest 
even  on  the  Bible  as  God's  word  in  various  ways. 
And  some  of  those  ways  may  even  be  quite  agnostic 
as  regards  religious  truth.  For  example,  a  man  may 
receive  the  Bible  as  ultimate  authority — an  authority 
above  the  criticism  and  independent  of  the  support 
and  confirmation  of  reason — an  authority  which 
makes  an  unconditioned  claim  on  belief.  That  is 
manifestly,  however,  to  accept  it  in  an  unintelligent 
and  capricious  manner,  and  the  faith  which  so  ac- 
cepts it  is  but  another  form  of  agnostic  unbelief  in 
man's  power  of  knowing  religious  truth.  Belief  in 
the  authority  of  the  Bible  is  as  obviously  bound  to 
give  reasons  for  itself  as  belief  in  the  authority  of 
the  Church.  The  authority  of  the  Bible  cannot  rea- 
sonably be  taken  on  trust  any  more  than  the  authority 

54? 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  KELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

of  the  Pope.  The  Bible,  too,  must  produce  its  cre- 
dentials and  submit  its  claims  to  criticism.  The  Re- 
formers failed  to  recognise  the  importance  of  that 
truth.  Kor  was  it  unnatural  that  they  should,  seeing 
that  their  opponents  in  the  Church  of  Rome  unre- 
servedly admitted  that  the  Bible  was  God's  word,  and 
ought  to  be  fully  accepted. 

Certain  it  is  that  they  overlooked  a  question  in 
which  both  they  and  their  Catholic  opponents  were 
vitally  concerned, — the  question  of  evidence.  But  it 
was  not  a  question  which  could  be  long  ignored.  It 
came  to  be  the  great  question  with  their  successors. 
They  were  called  on  to  combat  unbelief  in  special 
revelation ;  to  meet  an  enemy  holding  that  a  natural 
religion  discoverable  by  reason  was  the  only  religion 
man  needed, — that  all  religion  which  did  not  coin- 
cide with  natural  religion  was  false  or  superfluous. 
Christian  theologians  were  bound  to  combat  that  ene- 
my, yet  were  required  to  combat  it  with  its  own 
weapons.  They  had  to  prove  by  reason  that  reason 
was  not  sufficient;  to  humiliate  reason  so  far  as  to 
show  that  supernatural  light  was  necessary,  while 
acknowledging  its  competence  to  prove  the  supernat- 
ural what  it  claimed  to  be  even  to  those  who  were 
most  averse  to  admit  its  existence.  Owing  to  the 
operation  of  various  causes,  that  became  the  main 
concern  of  divines  in  the  eighteenth  century.  They 
occupied  themselves  comparatively  little  with  the 
spirit  or  contents  of  Scripture,  or  with  religious  doc- 
trine, feeling,  or  practice ;  whereas  they  were  as  much 
employed  in  "  proving  Christianity  "  as  if  it  existed 
only  to  be  proved.    All  the  theological  energy  of  the 

548 


EVIDENTIALISM 

century  concentrated  itself  on  the  task  of  producing 
and  exhibiting  evidences  sufficient  to  show  that  Chris- 
tianity ought  to  be  believed  to  be  true. 

That  the  evidentialist  divines  rendered  real  ser- 
vices to  the  cause  of  religion  and  of  human  progress 
cannot  fairly  be  denied,  but  they  by  no  means  suc- 
ceeded in  laying  bare  the  true  foundations  of  religious 
belief.  On  the  contrary,  they  may,  without  injus- 
tice, be  charged  with  having  divorced  faith  from  rea- 
son, belief  from  knowledge,  in  a  decidedly  agnostic 
manner.  For  what  they  sought  to  make  evident  was 
that  men  are  bound  to  receive  Christianity  as  true, 
not  because  they  can  know  it  in  itself  to  be  true,  but 
notwithstanding  their  being  necessarily  unable  to 
know  it  in  itself  to  be  true.  They  laboured  to  shut 
men  up  to  receive  Christianity,  along  with  whatever 
is  in  the  Bible,  in  the  slump,  as  it  were,  notwithstand- 
ing their  necessary  ignorance  of  its  essential  nature, 
because  in  the  Bible  and  guaranteed  to  have  come 
from  God  by  the  miracles  and  prophecies  recorded  in 
the  Bible.  That,  however,  was  a  very  unsatisfactory 
procedure,  and  such  faith  as  was  thereby  attainable 
could  not  be  other  than  a  poor  kind  of  faith.  We 
may  be  convinced  on  such  external  grounds  as  the 
jniracles  and  prophecies  recorded  in  Scripture  that 
the  Scriptures  are  true,  and  yet  be  quite  blind  to  the 
truth  of  the  truths  in  Scripture — just  as  a  man  may 
be  quite  convinced  on  external  evidence  that  Euclid 
is  all  true  and  yet  not  see  the  truth  of  a  single  propo- 
sition in  Euclid.  Arguments  from  miracles  and 
prophecies  may  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  the  Gospel 
is  not  the  work  of  man  but  the  word  of  God,  but  as- 

649 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  RELIGIOUS  BELIEF 

sent  to  that  conclusion  is  not  equivalent  to  faith  in 
the  Gospel  as  truth.  Mysteries  are  doubtless  involved 
in  Christianity  as  in  nature,  but  mysteries  are  no 
more  the  direct  objects  of  Christian  than  of  natural 
faith,  and  a  "  mystery  "  into  which  we  could  have  no 
insight  would  be,  as  Lotze  says,  "  a  mere  curiosity 
devoid  of  all  connection  with  our  religious  needs, 
and,  on  that  account,  an  unworthy  object  of  revela- 
tion." 

A  faith  in  Christianity  not  resting  directly  on  the 
knowledge  of  Christianity,  but  assuming  that  Chris- 
tianity cannot,  even  when  revealed  and  in  so  far  as 
revealed,  be  directly  known,  and  must  consequently 
be  rested  on  a  knowledge  of  external  incidents  and 
testimonies,  is  in  the  main  a  blind  faith,  and  every 
attempt  to  vindicate  it  as  the  true  faith  must  base 
itself  on  the  agnostic  hypothesis  that  God's  revelation 
of  Himself  and  of  the  spiritual  truth  contained  in  it 
cannot  be  in  themselves  the  proper  objects  of  knowl- 
edge and  experience.  Such  agnosticism  underlay  the 
evidentialist  apologetic  theology  as  a  whole,  and  hence 
it  is  not  without  substantial  reason  that  that  theology 
has  fallen  largely  into  disesteem.  If  religious  truths 
be  accepted  merely  on  the  authority  of  the  Bible,  or 
merely  on  such  external  grounds  as  the  miracles  or 
prophecies  therein  recorded,  they  are  not  accepted  by 
us  as  in  themselves  either  really  true  or  religious.  To 
be  apprehended  and  realised  by  us  as  properly  relig- 
ious truths,  we  must  have  a  living  insight  into  their 
nature  and  significance,  and  a  veritable  spiritual  ex- 
perience of  their  influence  on  our  hearts  and  lives. 
Revelation,  even  at  its  highest,  and  taken  in  its  strict- 

550 


REVELATION 

est  sense,  must  be  directly  verifiable,  otherwise  it 
would  be  a  revelation  which  did  not  reveal,  and  cer- 
tainly a  revelation  which  could  not  accomplish,  those 
spiritual  ends  for  the  sake  of  which  alone  we  can  rea- 
sonably conceive  a  revelation  to  have  been  given. 


651 


CHAPTER    X 
AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO  KNOWLEDGE  OP  GOD 

I.    A   GLANCE   AT    THE    HISTOEY   OF   KELIGI0U8 
KNOWLEDGE 

Knowledge  and  belief,  although  closely  connected, 
are  so  far  from  being  identical  or  equivalent  that  it 
is  as  necessary  to  treat  of  agnosticism  with  reference 
to  knowledge  of  God  as  to  treat  of  it  with  reference 
to  belief  in  God. 

In  all  the  higher  forms  at  least  in  which  God  has 
been  the  object  of  human  thought  He  has  been  not 
merely  believed  in  but  believed  to  be  known,  A 
worthy  faith  in  God  is  a  self -consistent  one,  includes 
a  feeling  of  certainty  of  knowing  what  and  in  whom 
it  believes,  and  rests  on  the  conviction  of  having  an 
actual  apprehension  of  God  as  the  true  God,  the 
most  real  of  beings.  It  is  not  to  be  understood  as 
necessarily  less  than  knowledge  but  as  essentially 
more  than  knowledge,  a  thing  of  the  heart  and  life 
as  well  as  of  the  intellect.  It  is  so  that  the  truly 
religious  man  understands  and  appreciates  it.  He 
does  not  say  of  either  the  object  or  contents  of  his 
faith  that  he  only  believes  that  they  are;  does  not 
feel  his  faith  to  be  a  mere  holding  for  true,  but,  on 
the  contrary,  feels  it  to  be  an  actual  holding  of  the 
truth  and  a  living  in  the  truth.  Even  the  faith  that 
God  is  so  apprehended  and  realised  must  be  admitted 
to  have  been  often  very  erroneous  and  defective,  but 

662 


HISTOEY   OF   RELIGIOUS   KNOWLEDGE 

it  is  always  better  than  mere  belief,  a  blind  belief,  a 
so-called  faith  wholly  divorced  from  knowledge  and 
practice. 

It  is  now  almost  universally  admitted  that  in  no 
region  of  the  earth  and  in  no  stage  of  human  history 
have  tribes  of  men  been  found  wholly  destitute  of 
conceptions  and  beliefs  of  a  religious  kind.  Wher- 
ever men  have  not  been  utterly  debased,  physically, 
intellectually,  and  morally,  the  visible  and  corporeal 
world  has  everywhere  suggested  to  them  some 
thoughts  of  the  invisible  and  divine,  and  the  experi- 
ences of  life  have  always  led  them  in  some  measure 
to  realise  the  sort  of  dependence  on  a  power  or 
powers  higher  than  their  own  which  is  what  is  dis- 
tinctively called  religious.  From  the  earliest  and 
lowest  to  the  latest  and  highest  stages  attained  by 
humanity  in  the  course  of  its  history  man  has  never 
ceased  to  show  himself  conscious  of  the  existence  and 
operations  of  what  transcends  all  that  the  senses  can 
perceive  or  the  mind  clearly  attain,  and  yet  which 
is  very  near  to  him,  with  the  approval  or  disapproval 
of  which  he  is  vitally  concerned,  and  which  he  is 
bound  to  revere  and  worship. 

Religion  has  passed  through  various  stages  and 
has  assumed  many  forms.  Its  history  has  been,  on 
the  whole,  a  progressive  self-revelation  of  God  in, 
through,  and  to  men, — an  itinerarium  mentis  in 
Deum,  or  soul's  progress  towards  God  and  in  God. 
If  of  the  three  ultimate  objects  of  knowledge, — self, 
the  world,  and  God, — God  be  the  Father  of  all  selves 
and  the  Creator  of  all  worlds,  God-consciousness 
must  be  a  more  profound  and  comprehensive  con- 

553 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE    OF    GOD 

scioiisness  than  either  world-consciousness  or  self- 
consciousness,  and  theology  must  ultimately  be  a 
more  fundamental  and  widely  inclusive  science  than 
either  cosmology  or  psychology.  Neither  matter  nor 
finite  minds  have  their  origin  or  explanation  in  them- 
selves. They  have  come  from  God,  and  to  be  com- 
prehended aright  must  be  seen  in  profounder  and 
clearer  views  of  God  than  men  have  yet  attained. 

•'  Accender  ne  dovria  piti  il  disio 
Di  veder  quella  essenzia,  in  die  si  vede 
Come  nostra  natura  e  Die  s'  unio. " 

— Dante,  Par.,  c.  ii.  40-42.* 

Religion  as  a  subjective  fact,  as  what  may  be  called 
piety,  is  man's  realisation  of  his  relatedness  to  what 
he  apprehends  as  Divine.  As  such  it  should  be  of  all 
frames  and  experiences  of  mind  at  once  the  most 
mysterious  and  the  clearest,  as  also  the  most  inti- 
mate, the  most  inspiring,  and  most  regulative.  It 
alike  reaches  to  the  deepest  and  rises  to  the  highest 
level  of  human  consciousness,  and  feels  the  giver 
and  sustainer  of  it  to  be  none  other  than  the  Divine 
itself.  Religion  as  a  historical  phenomenon  began 
like  other  historical  phenomena.  God  begins  at  be- 
ginnings and  brings  to  pass  what  can  be  made  of 
them.  He  lays  the  foundations  of  things  in  the 
depths  and  builds  upwards.  Hence  the  early  phases 
of  religion,  like  those  of  morality,  industry,  govern- 
ment, and  all  the  arts  and  sciences,  are  rudimentary. 
They  are  even  apt  to  seem  to  us  in  all  respects  con- 

•  "With  greater  ardour  should  we  be  incited 

To  see  that  Essence,  which  revealed,  will  show 
How  God  and  man  in  substance  were  united." 

—{Wright's  tr.) 

554 


PRIMITIVE  RELIGIONS 

temptible  and  unworthy  of  consideration.  That, 
however,  only  shows  how  short-sighted  men  are  apt 
to  be,  and  how  prone  to  overlook  that  beginnings 
should  be  viewed  in  relation  to  endings,  and  the 
seeds  of  things  be  judged  of  with  reference  to  what 
grows  out  of  them. 

Men  were  the  latest  and  most  highly  developed  of 
living  beings  to  appear  on  earth.  They  inhabited  it 
long  before  the  origin  of  civilisation  or  the  com- 
mencement of  historic  time,  and  also,  of  course,  long 
before  the  date  assigned  by  the  Church  to  the  crea- 
tion of  the  biblical  Adam.  The  earliest  traces  of 
religion — those  left  by  palaeolithic  and  neolithic  men 
— are  of  the  rudest  kind,  and  imply  only  conceptions 
of  the  supernatural  akin  to  those  of  modern  savages. 
Hence  the  history  of  religion  is  now  generally  recog- 
nised to  have  been,  in  the  main,  like  the  history  of 
man  himself,  a  progressive  development  throughout 
an  enormous  stretch  of  time.  Very  different  opin- 
ions, however,  are  still  held  both  as  to  its  starting- 
point  and  as  to  the  relative  position  of  its  stages.  As 
to  the  starting-point,  fetichism,  totemism,  folk-lore, 
ghost-  or  ancestor-worship,  polytheism  in  its  specific 
sense,  pantheism,  henotheism,  monotheism,  and  prim- 
itive revelation  have  still  each  its  advocates,  none  of 
whom  have  succeeded  in  establishing  their  favourite 
hypothesis.  ISTor  has  certainty  or  unanimity  been 
attained  as  to  the  general  order  in  which  the  ruder 
phases  of  religion  have  appeared.  None  of  the  ways, 
that  is  to  say,  in  which  the  many  forms  of  polythe- 
ism, understood  in  its  wider  or  generic  sense,  have 
been  arranged  by  anthropologists  and  comparative 

555 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE    OF    GOD 

mythologists  can  be  safely  held  to  represent  their 
real  historical  position  and  succession. 

But  even  should  there  be  no  single  progressive 
aeries  of  religions  ascertained  or  ascertainable,  there 
is  nowhere  a  more  amazing  example  of  progress  to 
be  witnessed  than  in  the  history  of  religion.  Won- 
derful as  has  been  the  progress  of  science  from  its 
beginnings  to  its  present  state,  it  is  not  more  won- 
derful than  has  been  the  progress  of  religion.  The 
intellectual  and  spiritual  distance  between  what  re- 
ligion was  at  its  lowest  and  what  it  is  now  in  Chris- 
tianity at  its  best  is  not  less  than  the  progress  made 
in  the  course  of  the  history  of  science.  Nor  is  there 
any  manifest  likelihood  that  it  will  be  otherwise  in 
the  future, — that  religion  will  lag  behind  science  or 
do  lesser  services  to  humanity  than  science  in  the 
future.  The  rudest  kinds  of  idolatry  are  still  repre- 
sented on  large  spaces  of  the  earth,  but  they  are  so 
rapidly  giving  way  before  monotheism,  and  especially 
before  monotheism  in  its  Christian  forms,  that  if 
Christian  Churches  were  only  faithfully  to  carry 
out  their  Master's  "  great  commission  "  all  the  exclu- 
sively polytheistic  religions  might  give  place  to  the 
worship  and  service  of  the  one  true  God  even  in  the 
course  of  the  present  century. 

The  polytheistic  religions  themselves,  viewed  as  a 
whole,  testify  to  the  power  of  a  consciousness  of  the 
Divine  in  human  life.  Even  a  polytheistic  religion 
or  polytheistic  conception  of  God  is  better  than  no 
religion  or  conception  of  God.  Polytheism  in  every 
form  has  in  it  some  conception  of  God,  some  germ  of 
religion,  and  in  its  various  forms  we  see  the  phases  of 

556 


POLYTHEISMS 

a  religious  progress.  To  have  any  apprehension  at  all 
of  the  superhuman  and  supernatural,  any  perception 
of  the  Divine  and  susceptibility  to  its  influence,  is 
for  human  life  and  history  a  most  momentous  fact 
and  experience.  It  is  man's  first  stepping-stone  to 
higher  things,  that  alone  by  which  he  can  raise  him- 
self above  himself  and  enter  on  a  progressive  course. 
Even  the  vaguest  gropings  of  men  in  their  lowest 
estate  for  the  aid  and  friendship  of  invisible  powers 
higher  than  their  own  are  not  to  be  despised.  They 
were  of  the  nature  of  religion,  and  the  first  motions 
towards  what  became  the  truest  and  best  in  religion. 
But  the  merely  rudimentary  polytheisms  were  vastly 
inferior  to  some  of  the  developed  polytheisms.  Some 
of  the  latter  implied  comparatively  high  conceptions 
and  ideals  both  of  Deity  and  humanity.  They  may 
even,  although  they  could  only  rule  the  mind  in  its 
youthful  immaturity,  have  done  more  for  the  prog- 
ress of  humanity,  through  eliciting  and  stimulating 
the  free  and  energetic  exercise  of  men's  faculties, 
than  religions  of  a  far  more  profound  and  serious 
character.  The  culture  of  Greece  is  the  best  vindi- 
cation of  the  scheme  of  providence  which  included 
the  religion  of  Greece.  There  have  been  times  in 
the  history  of  Christendom  when  highly  cultured 
men  could  look  back  with  longing  to  the  days  of 
Grecian  polytheism.  It  was  so  at  the  Renascence, 
when  the  most  active  minds  of  Europe  sought  in 
Hellenic  paganism  the  freedom  of  spirit  and  enthu- 
siasm which  they  could  not  find  in  medieval  scholas- 
ticism. It  was  so  even  at  the  commencement  of  last 
century,    when    the    cold    orthodoxy   and   the    pale 

557 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO    KNOWLEDGE    OF    GOD 

rationalism  of  his  time  led  Schiller  to  attempt  to 
replace  religion  by  art,  and  drew  from  his  discour- 
aged heart  such  poems  as  The  Gods  of  Greece  and 
Words  of  Wisdom. 

The  idea  of  the  Divine,  however,  to  be  found  in 
even  the  highest  forms  of  polytheism  has  been  to 
such  an  extent  outgrown  that  there  is  no  need  to 
dwell  further  on  polytheism  proper.  Neither  agnos- 
tics nor  non-agnostics  now  feel  the  truth  of  their 
cause  to  depend  on  the  truth  or  falsity  of  a  merely 
polytheistic  conception  of  Deity.  They  will  alike 
readily  acknowledge  that  whatever  services  polythe- 
ism in  the  strict  and  specific  sense  of  the  term  may 
have  rendered  to  mankind  in  the  past,  the  conception 
of  Deity  on  which  it  rests  has  ceased  to  be  credible 
to  the  men  of  to-day,  and  can  no  longer  satisfy  the 
demands  of  either  the  intellect  or  the  heart. 

But  there  are  worthier  conceptions  of  the  Divine 
than  the  polytheistic.  There  are,  for  instance, 
monistic  conceptions  of  the  Divine,  superior  to  the 
merely  polytheistic  while  inferior  to  a  truly  monothe- 
istic conception.  The  ancient  Egyptian  religion,  for 
example,  rested  on  such  a  conception.  Its  origin  is 
not  disclosed  by  Egyptian  history,  was  unknown  to 
the  Egyptians  themselves,  and  is  seemingly  still  un- 
known to  the  Egyptologists  of  to-day.  There  is 
neither  adequate  evidence  that  it  was  a  degeneration 
from  monotheism  or  at  first  properly  monotheistic, 
nor,  on  the  other  hand,  that  its  lowest  elements  were 
its  oldest  elements.  It  was  the  soul  and  life-blood  of 
a  civilisation  probably  much  older  than  the  Chinese 
and  certainly  older  than  the  Hindu.     It  was  an  ex- 

558 


ANCIENT    EGYPTIAN    EELIGION 

tremelj  complex  and  enigmatic  religion,  but  neither 
superficial  nor  unprogressive,  and  went  on  develop- 
ing for  thousands  of  years  without  losing  its  identity, 
left  perhaps  no  attribute  of  God  wholly  unrecognised, 
and  possessed  great  truths  which  it  only  too  skilfully 
concealed  from  those  deemed  unworthy  to  receive 
them.  In  the  Egyptian  religious  system  all  sorts  of 
powers  were  deified.  The  natural  powers  were  re- 
garded as  also  divine  powers,  working  visibly  and 
physically  in  the  aspects  and  agencies  of  the  uni- 
verse, yet  in  conformity  to  law,  and  with  a  religious 
and  moral  purpose.  Further,  the  separate  powers 
were  felt  not  to  be  all  powers,  the  particular  deities 
not  to  be  all  that  was  divine, — and  that  feeling  ex- 
pressed itself  sometimes  in  the  attribution  of  all 
power  to  one  particular  god,  and  at  other  times  in 
altogether  overlooking  the  particular  deities  and  per- 
sonalising and  glorifying  the  power  of  the  powers, 
the  gods  in  the  god.  The  Egyptian  religion  was 
monistic  as  well  as  polytheistic,  but  not  a  monothe- 
ism, although  so  far  tending  to  monotheism  and  at 
times  strongly  monotheistic  in  expression.  It  was  a 
monism  inclusive  of  polytheism  and  consistent  with 
the  utmost  exaltation  of  particular  gods;  not  mono- 
theism which  is  essentially  exclusive  of  polytheism 
and  recognises  only  one  god  as  truly  God.  Hence 
when  the  monistic  element  in  it  was  developed  the 
result  was  not  monotheism  but  pantheism.  It  is 
rather  to  monism  than  to  monotheism  that  nature- 
worship  leads,  and  naturalistic  monism  fully  devel- 
oped is  not  monotheism  but  pantheism. 

China  has  of  all  nations  had  the  longest  continu- 
559 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

ous  history,  and  throughout  its  whole  history  it  has 
had  a  religion  almost  as  peculiar  as  was  that  of  Egypt, 
and  one  which,  like  that  of  Egypt,  has  been  almost 
uninfluenced  from  without.  Its  simple  and  prosaic 
religion,  however,  is  in  character  utterly  unlike  what 
that  of  Egypt  was.  For  example,  whereas  the  latter 
was  an  excessively  priestly  religion,  one  of  the  pecul- 
iarities of  the  former  is  that  priests  have  had  little, 
if  anything,  to  do  with  either  its  development  or 
its  control.  The  Chinese  religion  is  essentially  an 
ethical  and  political  religion,  and  has  become  what  it 
is  under  the  influence  of  sages  and  statesmen,  of 
social  reformers  and  political  teachers,  of  whom  the 
most  honoured  is  Kong-tse  (Confucius,  h.  b.c.  551 
and  d.  478), — who  was  no  priest,  prophet,  or  even 
philosopher,  but  simply  a  moral  and  political  instruc- 
tor of  the  purest  Chinese  type, — one  who  drew  the 
wisdom  which  he  imparted  from  what  had  been 
written  before  him  in  the  books  called  Kings  and 
from  the  precepts  and  examples  of  the  wise  rulers 
of  the  Wan  Dynasty.  The  Chinese  words  T'ien,  Ti, 
and  Shang-ti,  words  as  old  as  any  that  exist  in  the 
Chinese  language,  express  the  idea  of  the  Divine 
which  the  Chinese  have  held  throughout  their  whole 
known  history,  and  perhaps  far  into  prehistoric  time. 
The  fundamental  characteristic  of  the  Chinese  re- 
ligion is  the  indissoluble  connection  of  invisible  Deity 
with  the  visible  heavens.  In  almost  all  religions 
God  and  the  heavens  have  been  closely  associated. 
All  the  higher  races  of  mankind  have  seen  the  glory 
of  the  Divine  to  be  revealed  in  the  face  of  the  sky, 
but  in  China  alone  have  Cod  and  the  heavens  never 

560 


CHINESE    IDEA    OF   THE    DIVINE 

ceased  to  be  indissolubly  connected,  to  be  deemed  in- 
separable and  indivisible.  Hence  the  Chinese  have 
so  conjoined  them  in  their  thoughts  that  God  and 
heaven  are  practically  identified,  God  not  being  a 
creator  of  heaven  or  distinct  from  heaven,  and 
heaven  not  being  merely  the  visible  or  material 
heaven.  Accordingly  what  they  regard  as  the  Divine, 
the  Supreme  Reality,  although  so  far  conceived  of 
as  endowed  with  intellectual  and  moral  qualities,  is 
not,  properly  speaking,  a  person,  but  merely  a  force, 
which  moves  and  acts  throughout  the  universe  as  a 
sustaining  and  generative  power,  and  as  a  principle 
of  order  and  rationality  to  which  individuals  ought 
to  conform  their  conduct,  and  by  which  especially 
the  national  life  should  be  regulated,  but  which  has 
neither  true  consciousness  nor  freedom,  neither 
affection  nor  will,  and  consequently  no  care  for  indi- 
viduals. Individuals,  indeed,  are  not  only  not  ex- 
pected to  worship,  but  are  prohibited  from  worship- 
ping, T'ien.  The  Emperor  is  alone  deemed  worthy 
to  do  so.  The  aspirations  and  adorations  of  the 
jieople  may  not  ascend  higher  than  the  monarch  him- 
self, their  deceased  ancestors,  and  an  indefinite  num- 
ber of  elemental  spirits  of  which  they  do  not  pretend 
to  have  much  knowledge.  With  such  a  religion  and 
the  impersonal  character  of  its  Supreme  Being  the 
Chinese  people  cannot  be  otherwise  than  deplorably 
lacking  as  individuals  in  spiritual  life,  and  as  a  nation 
socially  and  politically  weak  and  unprogresslve. 
Unfortunately  it  has  none  better.  The  Taoist  re- 
ligion which  traces  its  origin  to  Lao-tse,  an  elder  con- 
temporary of  Confucius,  and  the  author  of  a  mystical 

561 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE    OF    GOD 

little  treatise,  the  Tao-te-King,  rests  on  an  even 
poorer  basis  than  the  Confucian,  inasmuch  as  the 
Divine  Personality  is  even  less  recognised  in  it.  The 
word  "  Tao  "  has  been  variously  rendered  "  reason," 
"  nature,"  "  way."  What  is  denoted  by  it  is  not  a 
personal  intelligence  but  intelligence  as  a  law,  as  an 
incomprehensible  essence  or  agency,  as  being  thought 
of  as  an  energy  which  may  assume  an  infinite  variety 
of  forms  without  ever  truly  declaring  itself.  To  live 
conformably  to  it  is  regarded  as  the  great  moral  law ; 
and  identification  with  it  through  the  loss  of  personal 
existence  is  deemed  the  chief  good.  There  is  in 
China  a  third  religion  or  so-called  religion,  one  of 
foreign  origin.  Buddhism.  It  has  necessarily  failed, 
however,  to  supply  the  defects  of  the  native  religions, 
for  although  it  presented  a  high  moral  ideal  as  ex- 
emplified in  the  character  and  life  of  Buddha  it  was 
agnostic  in  its  teaching  as  to  God,  viewed  all  exist- 
ence as  irrational  and  vain,  and  virtually  identified 
the  chief  good  with  an  eternal  extinction  of  con- 
sciousness. In  all  the  three  Chinese  religions  there 
is  much  to  remind  us  of  modern  religious  positivism. 
The  Comtist  religion  is  closely  akin  to  them,  espe- 
cially to  the  Confucian.  It  would  almost  seem  as  if 
the  trinity  of  the  former,  with  its  three  members  or 
hypostases — Space  or  the  Grand  Milieu,  the  World 
or  Grand  Fetiche,  and  Humanity  or  the  Grand  Eire 
— had  been  borrowed  from  the  Trinity  of  the  latter 
— Heaven,  Earth,  and  Man.  That  what  is  thus  re- 
garded in  China  as  the  Divine  is  so  like  the  object  of 
European  positivist  worship,  deity  without  personal- 
ity, without  affinity  with  what  is  best  in  man,  and 

562 


BRAHMANISM 

indeed  almost  a  void,  is  what  more  than  anything 
else  explains  the  weakness  and  unprogressiveness  of 
China.  China  converted  to  the  service  of  the  true 
God  might  perhaps,  in  the  course  of  the  present  cen- 
tury, be  the  most  powerful  nation  in  the  world. 

The  best  example  of  a  pantheistic  monism  is 
Brahmanism.  It  was  preceded  by  and  almost  neces- 
sarily grew  out  of  a  naturalistic  polytheism.  It  does 
great  credit  to  the  ability  of  the  Hindu  mind,  and 
could  only  have  resulted  from  the  most  profound 
and  earnest  meditations  on  the  nature  of  existence, 
on  the  absolute  spirit,  on  the  relation  of  the  infinite 
and  finite,  on  reality  and  appearance,  on  life  and 
death,  on  suffering  and  retribution.  Also  it  has 
given  rise  to  a  vast  and  peculiar  civilisation,  to 
various  systems  of  theology  and  philosophy,  and  to 
an  abundant  and  remarkable  literature.  Hindu 
thoughts  may  yet  have  much  to  suggest  to  the  Euro- 
pean mind,  and  may  yet  considerably  modify  Euro- 
pean views  of  religion,  and  even  modify  them  for 
the  better.  On  the  whole,  however,  it  has  conspic- 
uously failed  to  apprehend  and  realise  that  idea  of 
the  Divine  on  which  alone  an  adequate  religion  can 
be  founded.  It  conceives  of  the  Supreme  Being  as 
so  absolutely  the  One  Being  that  all  finite  objects, 
finite  minds,  and  finite  interests  are  deemed  illusions, 
and  that  not  even  moral  distinctions  are  supposed  to 
exist  before  Him.  It  denies  to  Him  all  the  qualities 
which  can  only  be  found  in  a  person,  and  indeed  all 
definite  attributes,  and  thus  leaves  as  it  were  to  His 
worshippers  merely  an  empty  abstraction,  an  infinite 
blank.     A  religion  with  such  an  idea  of  Deity  not 

663 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

only  could  not  satisfy  the  common  mind,  but  in  order 
to  retain  any  hold  on  it  at  all  must  make  enormous 
and  most  inconsistent  concessions  to  it.  Hence  the 
Brahmans  had  to  capitulate  to  the  lower  castes  of 
India,  and  to  allow  them  to  worship  in  cruel  and  im- 
moral ways  a  host  of  contemptible  and  fantastic  gods. 
The  Zoroastrian  or  Mazdean  religion  seems  to  have 
been  the  only  properly  speaking  dualistic  religion, 
and  is  certainly  the  best  example  of  such  a  religion. 
It  may  fairly  be  allowed  to  have  been  kindred  in 
spirit  to  the  monotheistic  or  prophetic  religions. 
Nothing  of  a  strictly  historical  nature  is  known  about 
its  reputed  founder,  but  it  must  have  had  many 
prophets,  cannot  have  been  the  work  of  one  man  or 
even  of  one  generation,  but  was  obviously  a  religion 
which  had  passed  through  a  long  course  of  develop- 
ment from  a  naturalistic  phase  to  an  ethical  dualism. 
Its  two  fundamental  and  most  prominent  ideas  as  to 
nature  are  the  idea  of  a  law  in  nature  and  the  idea 
of  a  war  in  nature, — the  idea  of  a  law  in  nature 
because  there  is  a  serene  and  marvellous  order  there, 
and  the  idea  of  a  war  in  nature  because  it  contains 
powers  which  work  for  good  and  powers  which  work 
for  evil,  beings  that  benefit  man  and  beings  that 
injure  him,  creatures  that  are  pure  and  creatures 
that  are  foul.  The  laws  of  nature,  its  order  and 
harmony,  and  all  things  good  and  pure,  have  their 
origin  in  the  Heaven  God,  the  Supreme  God,  Or- 
muzd  (Ahura-Mazdao,  the  "All-knowing  God"), who 
sees  everything,  dwells  in  Light  which  is  his  body, 
and  is  at  once  Uncreated  Light  and  the  Uncreated 
Word.     But  over  against  Ormuzd  stands  Ahriman 

564 


MAZDEISM 

(Angro-Mainyu,  "the  smiting  or  destroying  Spirit"), 
and  he  is  a  formidable  foe  even  for  Ormuzd,  being 
uncreated  by  him,  and  himself  endowed  with  creative 
power,  so  that  to  every  good  spirit  he  can  oppose  a 
corresponding  evil  one.  Hence  there  has  arisen  a 
terrific  war  throughout  the  universe  into  which  all 
nature  has  been  drawn, — all  that  is  good  for  Ormuzd 
and  all  that  is  evil  for  Ahriman.  The  war,  however, 
is  not  a  scene  of  mere  confusion,  nor  is  its  result 
uncertain.  On  the  contrary,  it  is  one  of  order,  of 
ever-advancing  order,  and  is  steadily  becoming  more 
clear  and  intelligible.  The  light  which  centres  in 
Ormuzd  is  constantly  gaining  on  the  darkness, 
which,  vanquished  and  always  diminishing,  flies  with 
Ahriman.  The  issue  of  the  struggle  will  be  the 
complete  triumph  of  Ormuzd  and  the  manifestation 
of  his  absolute  goodness.  He  undertook  the  war 
with  the  intention  of  saving  his  enemy,  Ahriman; 
besought  him  to  love  the  good  and  have  pity  on 
himself;  and  has  sought  his  conversion  ever  since, 
and  will  finally  attain  it.  Through  Mithra — the  sun- 
god  and  god  of  msdom — he  will  enlighten  the  god 
of  darkness  and  change  him  into  a  mighty  angel  of 
light.  Ahriman,  and  those  who  have  followed  him, 
will  be  purified,  redeemed,  and  reconciled  to  Ormuzd. 
Hell  will  cease  to  be.  The  close  of  the  struggle 
will  be  the  resurrection  of  the  dead  and  the  regen- 
eration of  the  universe, — the  advent  of  a  kingdom 
in  which  there  will  be  no  impurity  or  unrighteous- 
ness. Mazdeism,  with  its  recognition  of  the  rever- 
ence due  to  the  holy  will  of  the  good  God,  its  belief 
in  a  kingdom  of  God,  and  its  hope  in  the  triumph  of 

565 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

good  over  evil,  had  conspicuous  merits  as  a  religion, 
and  afforded  scope  for  a  vigorous  and  manly  virtue. 
It  erred  chiefly  in  confounding  moral  and  physical 
good,  moral  and  physical  evil,  in  unduly  extending 
the  boundaries  of  evil,  in  exaggerating  the  power  of 
the  Evil  One,  and  in  attaching  undue  importance  to 
ritualistic  precepts  and  practices. 

The  highest  stage  of  religious  development  is  the 
monotheistic.  There  are  three  monotheistic  religions. 
These  are  the  Jewish,  Christian,  and  Mohammedan, 
and  only  in  them  is  belief  in  a  plurality  of  gods  en- 
tirely transcended.  Merely  speculative  monism  does 
not  exclude  polytheism.  Pantheism  can  only  com- 
mand popular  assent  when  supplemented  by  poly- 
theism. It  is,  for  example,  the  personal  gods  of 
Hindu  polytheism,  and  not  the  impersonal  principle 
of  Hindu  pantheism,  that  the  Hindu  people  worship. 
No  people  can  worship  what  they  believe  to  be  en- 
tirely impersonal. 

What  Jewish  monotheism  was  we  learn  from  the 
Old  Testament.  The  idea  of  God  is  the  central 
thought  in  the  Old  Testament.  There  the  God  of 
Israel  is  represented  as  the  only  true  God,  the  Maker 
and  Ruler  of  heaven  and  earth;  as  no  mere  essence 
or  substance,  or  force  or  law,  but  a  self,  a  person; 
as  possessing  all  the  characteristics  of  personality, — 
namely,  life,  knowledge,  affection,  will, — yet  as  pos- 
sessing them  without  the  limits  or  defects  peculiar  to 
created  and  finite  beings.  There,  while  to  God  is 
ascribed  in  common  with  man  intelligence  or  knowl- 
edge, there  are  also  ascribed  to  Him  in  contradistinc- 
tion to  man  omniscience  and  perfect  wisdom.   There, 

566 


JEWISH   MONOTHEISM 

while  to  God  is  ascribed  in  common  with  man  affec- 
tioUj  there  is  also  ascribed  to  Him  in  contradistinc- 
tion to  man  pure  and  perfect  goodness.  There, 
while  to  God  is  ascribed  in  common  with  man  will, 
there  are  also  ascribed  to  Him  in  contradistinction 
to  man  omnipotence,  immutability,  entire  truthful- 
ness, perfect  and  immutable  rectitude,  absolute  moral 
purity.  The  view  given  of  God  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment was  a  unique  and  unprecedented  phenomenon 
in  the  history  of  humanity, — a  view  singularly  com- 
prehensive, sublime,  and  practical;  one  which  rested 
not  on  speculation  and  ratiocination  but  on  God's 
own  self-manifestations  of  Himself  to  the  spirits  of 
men  through  His  works  and  ways  in  nature,  history, 
and  spiritual  experiences;  one  which,  in  spite  of  its 
simplicity,  so  exhibited  the  relationship  of  God  to 
nature  as  neither  to  confound  them  like  pantheism 
nor  to  separate  them  like  deism,  but  combined  both 
divine  immanence  and  divine  transcendence.  Ob- 
viously such  a  representation  and  view  of  God  was 
eminently  fitted  to  call  forth  and  sustain  a  living 
and  personal  faith;  an  essentially  ethical,  elevating, 
and  hopeful  faith  in  the  Creator,  Preserver,  and 
Ruler  of  the  world.  The  existence  of  utterances  in 
the  Hebrew  Scriptures  which  show  that  Hebrew 
faith  sometimes  conceived  of  God  very  unworthily 
is  no  reason  for  our  not  acknowledging  the  general 
justice  and  grandeur  of  the  view  of  God  given  in 
those  Scriptures. 

The  God  of  the  Old  Testament  is  also  the  God  of 
the  New  Testament.  Christ  and  the  Apostles  ac- 
cepted what  Moses  and  the  prophets  had  taught  con- 

667 


AGNOSTICISM   AS   TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

cerning  God.  They  assigned  to  Him  no  other  attri- 
butes than  had  already  been  assigned  to  Him.  Like 
Moses,  and  the  prophets  also,  they  made  no  attempt 
formally  to  prove  the  existence  or  to  define  the 
nature  of  God,  but  spoke  of  Him  either  as  from 
vision  or  from  inspiration.  Yet  what  they  taught 
regarding  God  had  both  originality  and  importance. 
They  made  great  innovations  on  the  Old  Testament 
doctrine.  Thus  there  was  in  that  doctrine  a  limited- 
ness  or  particularism  inevitable  from  the  very  nature 
of  the  connection  between  the  revelation  and  a  par- 
ticular people  chosen  to  be  its  channel  and  recipient 
which  could  only  be  transcended  through  the  con- 
nection being  broken.  There  was  a  real  inconsis- 
tency between  Jewish  particularism  and  the  univer- 
salism  of  the  disclosure  as  to  the  nature  of  God  which 
had  been  made  to  the  Jews.  Consciousness  of  the 
inconsistency  could  not  fail  to  grow  and  spread ;  and 
it  was  desirable  that  it  should,  in  order  that  the 
inconsistency  might  in  due  time  be  removed,  as  it 
was  through  the  teaching  and  work  of  Christ  and  His 
followers.  Gradually  the  idea  of  God  was  freed 
from  the  limitations  attached  to  it  by  its  connection 
with  what  was  temporary  in  Judaism,  and  the  world 
ripened  for  the  reception  of  a  universal  religion  and 
a  universal  morality  in  essential  accordance  with  the 
character  of  God  as  the  Father  and  King  of  all 
peoples.  Further,  there  was  in  Judaism  not  only  a 
particularism  but  also  an  externalism  inconsistent 
with  a  satisfactory  presentation  of  the  nature  of  God. 
On  priests  and  people  there  were  imposed  the  strict 
observance  of  many  positive  laws  and  close  attention 

568 


THE  FATHERHOOD   OF  GOD 

to  a  very  elaborate  ritual.  For  that  there  were  ade- 
quate temporary  reasons.  The  law  was  designed  to 
secure  due  reverence  for  Jehovah  and  to  extend  and 
■  deepen  a  sense  of  His  sanctity.  The  ritual  was  full 
of  instruction,  and  was  an  appropriate  medium  of 
prophecy  to  the  spiritually-minded  among  His  wor- 
shippers. But  both  law  and  ritual  could  be  greatly 
abused,  and  largely  were  so.  Neither  was  meant  to 
be  permanent.  Only  such  a  disclosure  of  the  spirit- 
uality, holiness,  righteousness,  and  love  of  God  as 
was  made  through  Christ  could  fully  suffice.  And  in 
due  time  it  was  given. 

What  is  central  in  the  New  Testament  view  of  the 
Divine  is  the  revelation  through  Christ  of  the  love  of 
God,  of  the  Fatherhood  of  God, — a  Fatherhood  not 
merely  of  natural  creation  or  national  selection  but 
of  spiritual  relationship, — of  sympathy,  mercy,  and 
grace  for  every  individual  soul.  On  no  other  basis 
could  a  truly  universal  religion  be  built  up.  The 
Jews  themselves  had  failed  to  distinguish  between 
the  temporary  and  the  permanent  in  the  dispensation 
under  which  they  lived.  Hence  they  were  not,  and 
indeed  have  not  even  yet  become,  a  missionary  peo- 
ple. They  received  proselytes,  but  did  not  seek  to 
proselytise.  It  was  the  life,  teaching,  and  death  of 
Jesus  which  originated  the  greatest  spiritual  revolu- 
tion in  the  history  of  the  world.  It  was  St.  Paul, 
however,  the  great  "  Apostle  of  the  Gentiles,"  who 
practically  initiated  it,  and  with  a  success  which  all 
the  world  knows.  And  here  I  cannot  refrain  from 
quoting  the  words  of  a  Jewish  author  resident  in 
America,  who  has  recently  published  a  singularly 

569 


AGNOSTICISM   AS   TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

wise  and  delightful  work,  admirably  fitted,  I  feel 
sure,  to  benefit  both  Jews  and  Christians.  "  It  was 
Paul's  broad  cosmopolitanism  that  gave  Christian- 
ity to  the  world.  It  was  his  far-seeing  and  high- 
thinking  mind  which  enabled  him  better  to  appreci- 
ate the  priceless  value  to  humanity  of  the  truths  held 
sacred  by,  and  confined  to,  the  Jews.  It  was  Paul's 
genius  which  conceived  the  idea  of  breaking  away 
from  the  incrusted  traditions  of  the  Jew,  and  going 
forth  to  convert  the  Gentile;  to  give  his  strength  and 
his  heart,  his  mind  and  his  soul  to  uplift  his  brethren 
outside  of  his  faith,  and  to  bring  them  nearer  to  the 
God  of  Israel.  He  saw  clearly  that  the  Jews  were 
preaching  universal  truths,  but  made  no  effort  to 
disseminate  them.  He  realised  that  for  the  faith  of 
his  fathers  to  accomplish  its  high  purpose  there  must 
be  teaching  and  preaching  among  non-believers  and 
in  foreign  lands;  and  so,  alone  and  unaided  except 
for  the  presence  and  help  of  God,  he  set  out  on  his 
heroic  task,  preaching  the  beautiful  Jewish  utter- 
ances set  forth  by  Jesus,  whom  he  had  accepted  as 
their  Master.  Thus  Paul  began  a  missionary  work 
that  in  time  revolutionised  the  religious  spirit  of  the 
world,  and  which  is  destined  to  continue  moving 
onward  so  long  as  civilisation  shall  stand.  The 
heathen  world  for  centuries  had  been  waiting  for 
Paul's  missionary  work.  Heathenism  in  all  its 
various  phases  had  utterly  failed  to  satisfy  the 
human  hearts  that  were  yearning  and  thirsting  after 
a  pure,  lofty,  and  spiritual  belief.  The  souls  of  men, 
through  paganism  and  idolatry,  had  been  deadened 
and  their  moral  sense  stunted.     Their  lives,  from 

670 


MOHAMMEDANISM 

the  cradle  to  the  grave,  were  most  selfish  and  thor- 
oughly materialistic.  Here  was  the  long-sought-for 
spiritual  balm  brought  to  their  very  doors  by  Paul, 
who  taught  that  the  meanest  among  them  had  a  soul 
which  was  precious  in  the  eyes  of  the  one  and  only 
God,  who  was  above  all  and  for  all.  It  was  Paul 
who  was  the  first  to  give  the  heathen  object-lessons  of 
the  Jewish  spirit  by  his  own  unselfish  life,  and  to 
teach,  in  the  spirit  of  his  Master,  that  love  is  greater 
than  hate,  that  kindness,  and  forgiveness,  and  peace, 
and  humility,  must  fill  the  human  heart  before  happi- 
ness can  be  attained  in  this  world  or  in  the  world  to 
come."  ^ 

The  ancient  Church,  the  Eastern  Church,  the 
Roman  Catholic  and  the  Protestant  Churches,  hold 
substantially  the  same  doctrine  regarding  the  nature, 
perfections,  and  operations  of  God. 

That  there  is  "  one  God  and  no  God  besides  God  " 
could  not  be  more  clearly  and  emphatically  afiirmed 
than  it  was  by  the  founder  of  Mohammedanism,  the 
latest  of  the  three  great  monotheisms.  Mohammed 
was  passionately  unitarian,  and  Mohammedanism 
has,  on  the  whole,  remained  so.  It  is  a  religion  far 
from  as  spiritually  rich  as  either  Judaism  or  Chris- 
tianity; and  its  Bible,  the  Koran,  however  pure  may 
be  its  Arabic,  is  certainly  as  regards  contents  far 
inferior  to  either  the  Old  or  N^ew  Testament.  Yet 
Mohammedanism  is  one  of  the  great  religions  of  the 
world.  It  is  an  essentially  earnest,  honest,  and  rea- 
sonable religion;  one  very  widely  spread,  one  which 

tJesvs  the  Jew,  and  other  Addresses.  By  Harris  Weinstock. 
Funk  &,  Wagnalls  Company,  New  York  and  London,  1902.  Pp. 
64,  65. 

571 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

has  assumed  far  more  forms  and  shown  far  more 
vitality  than  is  commonly  supposed;  one  which  has 
had  many  schools  and  sects,  some  dogmatic,  others 
mystical,  and  others  speculative.  Mohammedanism 
has  already,  in  the  course  of  its  history,  done  much 
for  civilisation,  learning,  science,  and  art,  and  may 
do  even  more  for  them  in  the  future.  Although  it 
sanctions  polygamy,  that  mischievous  and  immoral 
institution  is  no  more  inseparable  f roin  it  as  a  re- 
ligion than  it  was  from  Judaism.  The  Koran — the 
Bible  of  Islam — emphatically  asserts  the  omnipo- 
tence, omniscience,  majesty,  mercy,  and  sovereignty 
of  God.  It  ascribes  to  the  Divine  Being  perhaps 
every  attribute  ascribed  to  Him  in  the  Jewish  and 
Christian  Scriptures.  It  may  justly  be  said  to  teach 
a  harsh  and  repellent  predestinarianism ;  but  a  pre- 
destinarianism  of  the  same  kind  has  been  taught  by 
many  eminent  Christian  theologians  and  widely  ac- 
cepted by  Christian  men  as  enjoined  in  the  Bible. 
The  missionary  zeal  and  the  missionary  success  of 
Islam  are  undeniable.  It  has  made  hundreds  of  mill- 
ions of  converts  and  swept  idolatry  clean  off  a  large 
portion  of  the  earth.  Very  often,  it  must  be  ad- 
mitted, the  sword  has  been  its  chief  instrument  of 
conversion.  That  instrument  Christians  now  deem 
themselves  unwarranted  to  employ.  But  they  did 
not  always  think  so.  Christianity  was  largely  spread 
in  Europe  by  force  of  arms.  In  the  early  half 
of  the  Middle  Ages  pious  kings  and  emperors  felt 
it  to  be  their  bounden  duty  to  compel  their  heathen 
subjects  to  renounce  idolatry.  Mohammedans,  Jews, 
and  Christians  may  reasonably  be  expected  to  be 

672 


DOCTRINE    OF   THE    TRINITY 

gradually  drawn  nearer  to  each  other  by  what  is 
common  in  their  religions,  and  especially  by  the 
fundamental  fact  acknowledged  by  them  all, — the 
.  fact  that  there  is  only  one  God,  the  author  and  pre- 
server of  the  universe,  the  father,  ruler,  and  judge  of 
all  mankind.  The  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  has  hith- 
erto been  the  chief  barrier  to  their  union  and  co- 
operation. The  substantial  truth  of  the  doctrine  is 
likely  to  be  adhered  to  and  acknowledged  through- 
out Christendom,  but  the  defects  in  its  formulation 
may  well  become  increasingly  felt.  The  terms  in 
which  it  was  expressed  by  the  Nicene  Fathers  in 
ecclesiastical  Greek  have  no  equivalents  in  popular 
speech,  and  are  very  abstruse  and  technical.  The 
history  of  the  doctrine  is  naturally,  therefore,  not 
yet  ended.  Indeed  never  since  the  Nicene  age  has 
theological  thought  been  so  actively  and  indepen- 
dently occupied  with  it  as  during  the  nineteenth  cen- 
tury, especially  in  Germany.  The  results  as  yet 
attained  cannot  be  said  to  have  been  either  certain 
or  accordant,  but  it  may  be  hoped  that  such  a  finding 
will  eventually  be  come  to  as  will  make  it  impossible 
for  either  Jew  or  Mohammedan  to  suppose  that 
Christian  Trinitarianism  is  Tritheism,  or  is  in  any 
respect  inconsistent  with  the  unity  of  God, — the 
oneness  of  the  Divine. 

Even  so  rapid  a  glance  over  the  history  of  religion 
as  has  now  been  taken  may  show  that  man  has  every- 
where in  some  measure  been  a  religious  being,  feel- 
ing after  God  if  haply  he  might  find  Him,  and  think- 
ing, or  at  least  imagining,  himself  to  have  in  some 
degree  found  Him.     Throughout  the  whole  earth, 

573 


AGNOSTICISM   AS   TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

and  at  all  stages  of  human  history,  men  of  all  races 
in  all  conditions  have  not  only  been  seeking  the 
Divine  but  deeming  that  they  had  so  far  found  it, 
and  that  it  must  be  their  duty  and  would  be  for  their 
interest  to  act  so  and  so  with  respect  to  it.  Surely 
that  fact  itself,  however, — one  so  comprehensive  and 
so  manifest, — makes  it  very  unlikely  that  either 
atheism  or  antitheistic  agnosticism  can  be  true.  That 
men  have  everywhere  in  some  measure  recognised 
the  supernatural  and  superhuman,  and  have  felt  not 
only  warranted  but  bound  to  worship  it,  and  yet  that 
there  is  nothing  of  the  kind,  and  that  all  the  hopes 
and  fears,  all  the  thoughts,  feelings,  and  actions  con- 
nected with  it,  and,  in  a  word,  all  the  experiences 
deemed  religious,  are  mere  illusions,  must  surely  be 
a  delusion  such  as  only  an  abnormal  mind  can  enter- 
tain. There  is  nothing  to  warrant  it,  nothing  par- 
allel to  it,  in  either  nature  or  history.  The  incon- 
sistency of  it  with  a  reasonable  or  moral  government 
of  the  world,  with  the  rule  of  a  Supreme  Being  or 
Divine  Reason,  is,  of  course,  obvious. 

A  very  rapid  survey  of  the  history  of  religion  may 
further  suffice  to  convince  us  that  it  has  been,  on  the 
whole,  a  history  of  steady  and  comprehensive  prog- 
ress,— one  which  shows  us  a  gradual  widening, 
deepening,  and  enlightening  of  men's  thoughts  of 
the  Divine  from  age  to  age.  Looked  at  without 
prejudice,  the  history  of  religion  shows  us  the  same 
kind  of  progress  in  knowledge  of  God  as  the  history 
of  nature  and  the  history  of  man  show  us  in  knowl- 
edge of  their  respective  objects.  Just  as  the  investi- 
gation of  nature  and  the  study  of  man  have  always 

674 


KN'OWLEDGE    OF    GOD 

led  to  a  fuller  knowledge  of  nature  and  a  more  inti- 
mate acquaintance  with  man,  so  has  the  search  after 
God  been  continually  rewarded  by  a  clearer  appre- 
hension of  His  character,  works,  and  ways.  Every 
real  advance,  indeed,  of  knowledge  regarding  any 
one  of  the  three  ultimate  objects  of  knowledge  tends 
to  the  advancement  of  knowledge  of  the  others. 
Especially  true  is  it  that  all  progress  in  knowledge 
tends  upwards  and  Godwards,  seeing  that  it  is  in  God 
that  all  else  lives  and  moves. 

Knowledge  of  God  has  not  been  the  result  merely 
of  individual  efforts.  It  is  also  the  product  of  the 
collective  spiritual  work  and  experience  of  mankind. 
Gifted  and  inspired  leaders  of  men  have  nowhere 
had  greater  influence  on  the  minds  of  their  fellows 
than  in  the  sphere  of  religion,  but  even  there  they 
would  have  accomplished  little  if  they  had  been  with- 
out an  appropriate  social  medium  or  if  the  minds  of 
other  men  had  been  devoid  of  affinities  to  God  akin 
to  their  own.  The  roots  of  the  theism  of  to-day  lay 
in  the  hearts  of  primeval  men  and  are  connected  with 
all  the  religious  faith  of  to-day.  They  made  their 
presence  known  wh^n  the  first  human  beings  recog- 
nised that  there  was  a  being  or  beings  higher  than 
themselves  and  whom  it  became  them  to  worship 
and  please.  In  the  very  infancy  of  the  human  race 
men,  it  would  appear,  sought  after  what  was  higher 
than  themselves,  greater  than  all  they  saw,  some 
supernatural  and  superhuman  Being,  to  whom  they 
should  lift  up  their  thoughts,  imaginations,  and 
affections,  and  to  whom  they  "  should  stretch  out 
their  hands  if  haply  they  might  find  Him."  ISTor  have 

575 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

they  except  in  comparatively  rare  and  easily  explica- 
ble instances  ceased  to  do  so.  Humanity  as  a  whole 
has  continued  steadily  in  the  faith  that  more  is  to  be 
known  of  Deity  than  has  been  known  at  any  given 
time;  and  that  faith  has  been  a  continuous  source 
not  merely  of  religious  progress  but  of  all  progress. 
The  idea  of  God  accepted  in  the-  present  day  as  its 
chief  ruling  idea  is  only  explicable  by  the  whole  re- 
ligious history  of  man  which  has  preceded  it  and  the 
whole  religious  nature  of  man  which  underlies  that 
history. 

So  far,  then,  as  history  can  testify  to  truth,  the 
history  of  religion  may  reasonably  be  held  to  testify 
to  the  truth  not  merely  of  some  idea  of  God  but  to 
the  truth  of  the  monotheistic  idea.  It  is  only  in  the 
monotheistic  idea  that  the  final  stage  of  religious 
history  can  be  regarded  as  attained.  The  chief  re- 
ligions of  the  world  are  the  monotheistic  religions. 
Those  which  come  nearest  to  them  are  monistic. 
The  history  of  religion  viewed  in  its  entirety  implies 
that  there  is  only  one  true  God.  That  is  the  con- 
clusion to  which  it  has  tended  from  the  beginning, 
and  in  which  alone  can  the  entire  nature  of  man  find 
rest  and  satisfaction. 

The  monotheistic  idea  of  the  Divine  is  evidently 
superior  to  the  merely  monistic  idea.  The  latter  idea 
has  two  forms, — both  of  which  are  extremes,  con- 
trary and  conflicting  extremes, — materialism  and 
pantheism.  Materialism  finds  the  ultimate  explana- 
tion of  things  in  matter,  and  therefore  always  so  far 
idealises,  glorifies,  and  deifies  matter,  yet  also  always 
and  strongly  tends  to  atheism.     I  have  treated  of  it 

576 


MONOTHEISTIC    AGREEMENT 

in  so  far  as  anti-theistic  in  my  Anti-Theistic  The- 
ories.^ For  many  minds  pantheism  is  as  fascinating 
as  materialism  is  repellent.  And  it  must  be  allowed 
to  have  some  great  merits.  It  is  superior  to  material- 
ism, to  atheism,  to  polytheism,  and  even  to  the  deism 
which  not  only  distinguishes  God  from  the  world 
but  separates  and  excludes  Him  from  the  world.  It 
is  much  inferior,  however,  to  a  true  theism.  That 
also  I  hope  to  have  shown  in  Anti-Theistic  Theories.^ 
The  three  monotheistic  religions  in  the  main  agree 
as  to  what  the  Divine  is,  and  it  is  to  be  hoped  that 
on  that  broad  and  solid  basis  their  adherents  may 
co-operate  in  building  up  the  monotheism  of  the 
future.  The  time  seems  coming,  and  even  rapidly 
coming,  when  practically  all  religions  on  earth  will 
be  monotheistic.  The  ideas  of  the  Divine  implied  in 
the  lower  religions  may  justly  be  regarded  as  having 
been  steps  or  stages  towards  the  monotheistic  idea, 
but  they  are  superseded  now,  and  all  that  was  true 
or  good  in  them  will  find  its  fruition  in  what  is  far 
truer  and  better.  The  Divine  is  not  divided  or  divis- 
ible. It  is  one,  and  it  comprehends  and  unifies  all 
that  is  real,  and  true,  and  good.  Hence  it  is  only  the 
monotheistic  idea  of  the  Divine  that  requires  to  be 
defended  against  agnostic  attacks.  That  idea  is  the 
highest  and  most  comprehensive  to  which  the  human 
mind  has  attained.  It  is  the  apprehension  alike  of 
the  Absolute  of  Philosophy  and  of  the  Infinite  Per- 
sonal God  of  Theism. 

»  Lectures,  ii.-iv.,  pp.  39-75,  and  Notes,  iii.-xix. ,  pp.  460-604. 
^Lectures,  ix.,  x.,  pp.  536-654. 


577 


AGNOSTICISM   AS   TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 


II.    IK    WHAT    SENSES    KNOWLEDGE    OF    GOD    IS    NOT 
ATTAINABLE 

There  are  some  significations  of  the  term  "  knowl- 
edge "  in  which  men  cannot  claim  to  have  a  knowl- 
edge of  God.  It  is  necessary  to  indicate  what  these 
significations  are.    That  I  shall  now  endeavour  to  do. 

I.  One  is  that  man's  knowledge  of  God  is  not, 
and  cannot  be,  a  comprehensive  or  exhaustive  knowl- 
edge. As  in  all  other  respects  so  in  regard  to  knowl- 
edge man  is  a  very  limited  creature,  closely  related 
to  the  higher  apes,  and  the  inhabitant  of  a  planet 
which  is  a  very  small  part  of  God's  vast  universe. 
He  knows  neither  the  extent  nor  the  depths  of  God's 
ways.  He  cannot  measure  the  immeasurable,  or 
find  out  the  Almighty  unto  perfection.  The  greatest 
of  his  species,  far  from  having  a  comprehensive 
knowledge  of  God  even  yet,  know,  as  in  the  age  of 
Job,  only  a  small  part  of  His  ways,  and  that  little 
superficially.  Whoever  seeks  sincerely  and  earnestly 
to  know  God  may  hope  for  an  unending  progress  in 
the  knowledge  of  Him,  but  he  cannot  reasonably 
hope  to  attain  a  complete  comprehension  of  Him. 
Mystery  will  never  be  eliminated  from  theology. 
The  theology  which  fails  to  recognise  the  existence 
of  mystery  cannot  be  much  worth  studying. 

While  a  comprehensive  knowledge  of  God,  however, 
is  beyond  human  attainment,  no  one  is  entitled  to 
say,  or  justified  in  thinking,  that  God  is  incom'pre- 
hensihle  in  Himself.  We  have  no  right  to  include, 
as  has  been  often  done,  incomprehensibility  among 
the  attributes  of  God.     God  is  not  incomprehensible 

578 


KNOWLEDGE    OF   GOD   RELATIVE 

in  Himself,  for  He  is  not  incomprehensible  to  Him- 
self. God  is  light,  and  in  Him  there  is  no  darkness, 
no  ignorance,  at  all.  The  Divine  incomprehensibility 
is  not  an  attribute  of  the  Divine  nature  itself,  but 
a  relation  of  the  Divine  nature  to  our  minds.  Were 
God  in  any  wise  incomprehensible  to  Himself  His 
knowledge  would  be  limited.  God  Himself  alone 
can  be  the  adequate  object  of  His  own  infinite  mind, 
and  His  omniscience  can  only  be  strictly  infinite  if 
He  know  perfectly  not  only  the  universe  but  His 
own  infinite  self.  But  He  necessarily  is,  and  must 
for  ever  be,  incomprehensible  to  us.  We  cannot 
know  Him  as  He  knows  Himself  and  knows  us.  We 
cannot  know  Him  as  we  can  know  what  is  finite ;  as 
we  know  a  proposition  in  geometry;  as  we  know  an 
effect  when  we  are  thoroughly  acquainted  with  its 
causes.  We  can  only  have  a  limited  and  apprehen- 
sive knowledge  of  Him  derived  from  His  manifes- 
tations of  Himself  to  us  in  His  works  and  ways,  and 
the  more  we  acquire  of  such  knowledge  of  Him  the 
more  we  shall  feel  how  utterly  a  comprehensive 
knowledge  of  Him  is  beyond  us.  It  is  not  by  igno- 
rance of  God  that  a  due  sense  of  His  incomprehensi- 
bility by  us  is  produced  in  us,  but  by  such  knowledge 
of  Him  as  is  all  we  can  attain.  The  more  we  learn  to 
know  of  Him  the  more  conscious  we  must  be  of  His 
unknowableness  to  us.  If  every  real  addition  to  our 
knowledge  of  any  department  or  portion  of  God's 
universe  be,  as  it  indubitably  ever  is,  a  new  disclos- 
ure to  us  of  the  extent  of  our  ignorance,  still  more 
does  that  hold  true  of  every  addition  to  our  knowl- 
edge of  God  Himself. 

579 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE    OF    GOD 

In  so  far  as  agnosticism  warns  or  constrains  us  to 
feel  the  littleness  and  limitations  of  our  knowledge 
of  God,  and  His  necessary  and  infinite  transcendence 
of  our  highest  thoughts,  so  far  it  does  us  an  impor- 
tant service.  In  much  of  our  theology  and  still  more 
of  our  popular  religious  opinion  His  transcendence 
of  all  human  intelligence  is  too  plainly  forgotten  and 
ignored,  to  the  great  detriment  of  the  reverence  and 
humility  which  are  His  due.  So  long  as  men  con- 
ceive of  God  as  essentially  such  an  one  as  them- 
selves, as  a  kind  of  vastly  magnified  man,  or,  in 
other  words,  so  long  as  they  conceive  of  Him  in  the 
coarse,  definite,  familiar  fashion  still  common  among 
us,  will  agnosticism,  even  in  exaggerating  our  igno- 
rance of  the  Divine,  have  an  important  lesson  to 
teach  us,  a  needed  spiritual  purpose  to  serve  in  the 
world. 

II.  There  is  another  signification  of  the  term 
knowledge  in  which  we  are  not  entitled  to  claim  a 
knowledge  of  God.  We  cannot  have  what  is  called 
by  certain  philosophers  and  theologians  an  absolute 
knowledge  of  God — a  knowledge  of  Him  as  purely 
and  entirely  in  what  they  are  pleased  to  call  "  in 
Himself."  We  have  no  such  knowledge  of  any  real 
being.  All  our  knowledge  is  relative,  and  generally 
even  very  defective  and  shallow.  We  must  be  con- 
tent to  know  God  as  He  has  revealed  Himself  in  His 
works  and  ways,  in  physical  nature,  the  minds  of 
men,  and  the  histories  of  nations.  If  we  are  foolish 
enough  to  hope  to  know  Him  aloof  from  and  out  of 
all  relation  to  any  determinate  mode  of  existence  of 
His  own,  to  our  faculties,  or  to  other  beings,  our 

580 


KNOWLEDGE    OF   GOD   EELATIVE 

hope  must  be  in  vain.  Not  a  few  philosophers  and 
theologians  have  written  and  spoken  much  about 
such  knowledge  of  God, — knowledge  of  God  as  what 
they  arbitrarily  call  the  Absolute.  Every  word, 
however,  spoken  or  written  on  the  assumption  of  the 
atttainability  of  such  a  knowledge  of  God  has  no 
practical  bearing  whatever  on  the  question  as  to 
whether  or  not  we  can  know  God  in  any  reasonable 
sense, — whether  or  not  we  can  know  Him  as  we 
know  everything  else  that  we  really  know. 

To  be  unable  to  know  God  out  of  all  relation,  that 
is,  apart  from  His  attributes,  apart  from  His  created 
universe,  apart  from  His  dealings  with  mankind, 
apart  from  our  own  power  of  knowing  Him,  need 
not  be  felt  by  us  as  any  privation  at  all.  A  God 
without  attributes — a  God  with  nothing  to  distin- 
guish Him  from  any  one  or  anything  else — a  God 
out  of  all  relations — is  no  God  at  all.  To  say  of  God 
that  we  do  not  know  what  He  is  in  Himself  apart 
from  His  attributes  and  relationships  is  merely  to 
say  of  Him  what  we  must  say  of  every  other  being 
or  thing.  It  is  only  as  possessed  of  qualities  that 
any  being  exists  or  acts.  No  man  has  the  slightest 
knowledge  even  of  his  own  nature  apart  from  its 
powers,  properties,  and  affections.  Nay,  more,  take 
these  away,  and  you  take  away  at  the  same  time  his 
nature  and  leave  nothing.  So  of  God.  We  cannot 
know  the  "  God  in  Himself  "  of  sundry  sages  and 
divines,  for  the  simple  but  sufficient  reason  that 
there  is  no  such  God  to  know.  There  is  no  God 
without  powers,  affections,  attributes,  relationships; 
and  when  viewed  in  these — in  His  omnipotence  and 

581 


AGNOSTICISM  AS   TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

omniscience,  His  holiness  and  love,  His  Creatorsliip, 
Fatherhood,  or  Sovereignty — He  is  viewed  "  in  Him- 
self," in  the  only  true  and  reasonable  sense, — that  is, 
as  distinct  not  from  His  own  characteristics,  but 
from  other  beings. 

The  sole  practical  result,  it  seems  to  me,  of  the 
elaborate  reasonings  of  Sir  William  Hamilton  and 
Dean  Mansel  on  the  Absolute  and  the  Infinite  was 
just  to  show  us  that  if  we  are  foolish  enough  to  try 
to  conceive  of  God  in  the  absurd  way  to  which  I 
have  referred, — if  we  start  with  a  notion  of  "  God- 
in-Himself "  as  vain  as  Kant's  "  thing-in-itself," 
identify  that  notion  with  the  Absolute  or  the  Infi- 
nite, and  reason  on  it  as  if  it  were  real  and  intelli- 
gible,— we  must  inevitably  involve  ourselves  in  end- 
less confusion  and  contradiction.  That  may  well 
seem  a  small  result  to  have  been  gained  by  so  enor- 
mous an  expenditure  of  logical  energy,  and  might 
surely  have  been  got  with  less  trouble.  Still  we 
must  accept  it  with  thankfulness.  Certainly  we 
should  be  careful  to  think  of  God,  or  the  Absolute, 
or  the  Infinite,  in  a  way  quite  otherwise  than  that 
against  which  Hamilton  and  Mansel  argued,  while 
strangely  supposing  it  the  only  way  in  which  we 
could  think  of  Him.  Let  us  try  to  think  of  God 
only  in  a  way  in  which  there  is  reasonableness  and 
reality,  and  not  identify  Him  in  our  thoughts  with 
any  absurd  abstraction,  any  mere  idol  of  the  intel- 
lect. 

III.  There  is  a  third  sense  in  which  we  ought  not 
to  claim  ability  to  know  God.  We  are  not  to  assume 
that  we  can  have  an  apprehension  of  God  indepen- 

682 


GOD    KNOWN   BY    SELF-MANIFESTATION 

dent  of  His  own  manifestation  of  Himself  to  us.  We 
can  know  God  not  only  because  He  is  but  because  He 
makes  Himself  known  to  us.  He  is  only  known  to  us 
so  far  as  self-revealed  to  us.  The  grounds,  or  evi- 
dences, or  proofs  of  the  legitimacy  of  our  belief  in 
God  are  His  own  manifestations.  If  so,  it  follows 
that  in  affirming  man  may  know  God  we  are  not 
arrogating  to  the  finite  human  mind  a  power  so  ex- 
traordinary as  to  be  incredible.  We  claim  to  know 
God  only  through  the  help  of  God.  Our  knowledge 
of  Him  is  derived  from  Himself,  and  hence  to  know 
Him  shows  not  so  much  the  power  of  the  finite  to 
reach  the  Infinite  as  the  power  of  the  Infinite  to 
reach  the  finite. 

But  if  it  be  so,  how  stands  it  with  the  agnostic 
denial  of  man's  ability  to  know  God?  Plainly  thus: 
it  means  not  only  what  it  directly  asserts,  namely, 
that  man  cannot  know  God,  but  also,  by  necessary 
implication,  God's  inability  to  make  Himself  known 
to  man.  Both  assertions,  however,  are  extremely 
rash,  and  the  agnosticism  which  takes  upon  itself 
the  responsibility  of  defending  them  would  require 
to  be  a  very  "  learned  ignorance  "  indeed, — an  igno- 
rantia  dodissima  possessed  of  a  vast  if  not  infinite 
knowledge. 

Man  cannot  know  God:  that  is  what  the  non-theis- 
tic  agnostic  says.  He  does  not  deny  that  there  is  a 
God.  He  does  not  assert  that  the  idea  of  a  God  is 
irrational  and  self-contradictory,  so  as  to  entitle  him 
to  disbelieve  and  deny  that  there  is  a  God.  What 
he  says  is,  whether  there  be  a  God  or  not,  man 
cannot  know  that  there  is  a  God, — even  if  there  be 

583 


AGNOSTICISM   AS   TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

a  God  it  is  impossible  for  man  to  know  His  existence. 
But  even  that  assumes  a  kind  of  knowledge  of  the 
limits  of  knowledge  which  ought  not  to  be  assumed 
to  be  either  attained  or  attainable.  For,  as  I  have 
already  had  to  show,  while  there  is  no  reason  to 
doubt  that  we  may  discover  internal  limits  of  human 
knowledge  in  the  conditions  and  laws  to  which  the 
human  intellect  must  conform  if  it  would  attain 
knowledge,  there  is  great  reason  for  doubting  our 
ability  to  discover  the  external  limits  of  knowledge, 
— the  boundaries  which  separate  things  knowable 
from  things  unknowable.  To  lay  down  that  this  or 
that  thing — this  or  that  proposition — which  involves 
no  contradiction,  which  is  not  intrinsically  irrational, 
can  never  be  known,  never  be  proved,  is  an  act  of  an 
agnosticism  closely  akin  to  an  audacious  dogmatism. 
A  finite  mind  like  that  of  man  has  no  right  to  assign 
fixed  objective  limits  to  its  capability  of  knowing; 
no  right  to  assume  that  any  reality  is  utterly  un- 
knowable,— that  between  existence  and  knowledge 
there  is  anywhere  an  impassable  barrier  or  chasm. 
By  doing  so  it  arrogates  to  itself  a  superhuman 
knowledge  of  its  own  possible  attainments.  Its  seem- 
ing modesty  is  actually,  although  unconsciously,  real 
pretentiousness. 

As  already  indicated,  however,  there  is  still  more 
in  the  agnostic  denial  that  man  can  know  God. 
There  is  implied  that  even  if  God  exists  He  cannot 
make  Himself  known  to  man.  The  agnostic,  there- 
fore, in  the  very  act  of  denying  that  God  can  be 
known,  virtually  affirms  that  he  himself  knows  what 
God  cannot  do;  that  he  knows  the  limit  of  the  power 

584 


AGNOSTIC  POSITIONS 

of  self-revelation  which  an  Infinite  God  could  pos- 
sess; that  he  knows  that  even  an  Infinite  Being  could 
not  make  known  His  own  existence  to  His  own  creat- 
ures. Such  agnostic  atheism  seems  to  be  identical 
with  atheistic  agnosticism,  or,  in  other  words,  to  be  a 
manifest  self-contradiction.  Things  are  not  always 
what  they  seem.  Under  the  seeming  pride  of  the 
claim  to  know  God  there  may  be  present  only  a 
humble  ascription  to  God  of  the  power  to  teach  us 
to  know  Himself.  Under  the  seeming  humility  of 
the  declaration  God  cannot  be  known  there  lurks 
the  audacious  afltirmation  that  a  finite  mind  can  trace 
the  limits  of  infinite  intelligence  and  power. 

III.  AGNOSTIC  POSITIONS  KELATIVE  TO  KNOWLEDGE 
OF    GOD 

I  would  now  proceed  to  consider  the  chief  agnostic 
positions  which  have  been  held  regarding  knowledge 
of  God. 

I.  First,  then,  there  is  the  position  that  knowledge 
of  God,  and  religious  knowledge  generally,  is  only  to 
be  attained  through  special  revelation.  The  holders 
of  that  position  are  obviously  agnostics  with  refer- 
ence to  some  of  the  sources  of  religious  knowledge. 
They  overlook  or  refuse  to  regard  nature,  mind,  and 
history  as  media  through  which  God  makes  Himself 
known,  and  contend  that  special  revelation  is  the 
only  medium  through  which  we  can  become  cogni- 
sant of  Him.  And  there  have  been  many  such  ag- 
nostics. Their  agnosticism  is  of  a  kind  which  has 
shown  itself  more  or  less  in  all  stages  of  Christian 
thought  and  theology.     The  theology  even  of  the 

585 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

early  Christian  teachers  included  what  we  should  call 
natural  theology,  but  it  was,  mainly  at  least,  drawn 
not  directly  from  nature  but  from  the  Old  Testament, 
supplemented  by  the  views  of  Greek  and  other  sages 
who  had  been  favoured  with  some  knowledge  of  a 
primitive  revelation.  That  it  should  have  been  so  is 
easily  explicable,  and  indeed  was  inevitable,  but  a 
dangerous  illusion  was  implied  which  gave  rise  in 
course  of  time  to  an  incalculable  amount  of  mischief. 
The  teachers  of  the  Church  in  forming  their  views 
of  the  universe  and  of  God  as  revealed  therein  gave 
to  Scripture  the  primary  place  and  to  Nature  only  a 
secondary  place,  and  deemed  themselves  bound  in 
all  cases  of  apparent  conflict  to  prefer  the  former  to 
the  latter — i.e.,  the  words  written  in  human  speech 
to  the  very  Divine  realities  to  which  the  words  re- 
ferred. 

Hence  men  were  for  ages  led  to  neglect  the  direct 
study  of  nature  and  history,  and  to  accept  as  truths 
supernaturally  revealed  in  Scriptu.'e,  and  which 
could  not  be  called  in  question  without  impiety,  all 
sorts  of  pseudo-scientific  notions  and  hypotheses. 
Hence  also  that  long  and  deplorable  war  between 
superstition  and  reason  which  is  so  often  most  er- 
roneously represented  as  the  conflict  of  religion  and 
science,  and  in  which  every  seeming  victory  of  the 
former  was  necessarily  a  real  defeat. 

Luther  and  a  number  of  the  reformers  ascribed 
to  Scripture  a  position  inconsistent  with  an  adequate 
recognition  either  of  the  rights  of  reason  or  of  the 
divine  instructiveness  of  creation,  providence,  and 
man's  own  body  and  spirit.     Faustus  Socinus,  the 

586 


THE   HUTCHINSONIAN   SCHOOL 

founder  of  Socinianism,  however,  was  perhaps  the 
first  among  Protestants  to  represent  men  as  wholly 
dependent  upon  Scripture  for  the  knowledge  of  God. 
He  denied  that  there  was  any  natural  religion,  and 
traced  all  religious  beliefs  and  practices  to  special 
revelation  as  their  source. 

So  late  even  as  the  eighteenth  century  there  was  in 
England  a  theological  school  of  considerable  influence 
which  maintained  that  the  Bible  was  the  one  sure 
source  of  scientific  truth;  that  the  only  trustworthy 
Natural  Philosophy  must  be  drawn  from  the  Divine 
disclosures  made  to  Adam  and  Moses.  It  was  named 
from  its  founder  the  Hutchinsonian  school,  and 
among  its  most  zealous  members  were  learned  divines 
belonging  to  Oxford  and  Cambridge,  such  as  Bishop 
Home  of  Norwich,  Jones  of  Nayland,  and  Drs.  Bate 
and  Parkhurst.  Even  so  sagacious  a  man  as  Presi- 
dent Forbes  of  Culloden  was  attracted  by  Hutchin- 
son's system,  and  gave  a  very  favourable  account  of 
its  principles  in  a  pamphlet  published  anonymously 
at  Edinburgh  in  1736  and  entitled  A  Letter  to  a 
Bishop  concerning  some  important  discoveries  in 
philosophy  and  theology.  According  to  the  Hutchin- 
sonians  men  are  dependent  on  the  Bible  not  only  for 
spiritual  guidance  but  also  for  a  knowledge  of  the 
fundamental  principles  of  all  true  science  and  philos- 
ophy. To  "  Newton's  Principia  "  they  opposed  what 
they  called  "  Moses's  Principia."  The  former  they 
regarded  as  thoroughly  false,  and  also  as  materialis- 
tic and  atheistic  in  tendency.  Hence  they  resisted 
the  spread  of  the  Newtonian  philosophy  in  England, 
and  opposed  it  even  more  bitterly  than  did  the  Car- 

587 


AGNOSTICISM   AS   TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

tesians.  Moses's  Principia,  they  held,  alone  con- 
tained a  true  science  of  nature,  and  that  science  must 
be  drawn  directly  and  exclusively  from  the  pure, 
primitive,  unpointed  Hebrew  text  of  Scripture.  Their 
whole  system  was  founded  on  the  assumptions  that 
the  Hebrew  Bible  without  points  is  perfect;  that  all 
Hebrew  root-words  have  definite  and  profound  mean- 
ings which  were  originally  communicated  by  God  to 
Adam  in  paradise  and  afterwards  redelivered  to 
Moses  in  the  wilderness ;  and  that  the  only  true  natu- 
ral philosophy  must  be  educed  from  the  pure  and 
authentic  Old  Testament  text.  Such  assumptions 
happily  require  no  refutation  in  the  present  day. 

Dr.  John  Ellis  published  in  1Y43  a  treatise  entitled 
The  Knowledge  of  Divine  Things  from  Revelation, 
not  from  Reason  or  Nature,  of  which  a  2°  ed.  ap- 
peared in  1Y71  and  a  3°  ed.  in  1811.  The  way  in 
which  he  there  deals  with  reason  and  nature  as  re- 
lated to  religion  is  entirely  agnostic.  He  recognises 
no  disclosures  of  God  in  nature.  He  represents 
reason  as  limited  in  its  operations  exclusively  to  the 
objects  of  sense.  He  holds  that  but  for  revelation 
man  could  form  no  conception  whatever  of  the  Divine 
Being,  or  of  any  spiritual  realities,  relations,  or  obli- 
gations. The  same  views  were  adopted  by  Archbish- 
op Magee  of  Dublin,  famed  for  his  work  on  The 
Scripture  Doctrines  of  Atonement  and  Sacrifice,  and 
by  the  Wesleyan  Methodist  divine,  Dr.  Richard  Wat- 
son, still  more  famed  for  his  Theological  Institutes. 
Were  it  not  for  their  faith  in  revelation  those  pious 
Christian  men  would  have  been  as  much  sceptics  and 
agnostics  as  David  Hume  himself.    Their  faith  in  an 

588 


BIBLIOLATRY   INDEFENSIBLE 

oral  or  written  revelation  saved  them  from  that  fate, 
but,  assuming  as  it  did  reason  to  be  occupied  entirely 
with  sense  and  nature,  to  be  in  no  respect  a  spiritual 
revelation,  it  was  necessarily  an  inconsistent  and  un- 
reasonable faith. 

There  is  no  need  in  the  present  day  to  dwell  on 
the  refutation  of  a  doctrine  so  strangely  narrow,  so 
obviously  unreasonable.  God's  revelation  of  Himself 
is  not  confined  to  a  book.  The  soul  is  itself  a  revela- 
tion of  God.  Creation  is  the  manifestation  of  God  in 
space.  History  is  the  manifestation  of  Him  in  time. 
The  whole  wondrous  universe  around  us,  full  of  His 
works,  ruled  by  His  laws,  mirroring  His  perfections, 
is  a  revelation  of  Him  made  to  the  eyes  and  ears, 
hearts  and  minds,  of  men, — a  revelation  which  lies 
open  before  all  human  beings,  and  which  has  taught 
almost  all  human  beings  something  of  God.  Yet, 
notwithstanding  that,  because  God  has  given  us  a 
special  revelation  of  Himself  in  a  historical  form, 
and  a  Book  from  which  we  may  derive  special  in- 
struction as  to  what  that  revelation  is,  some  learned 
and  pious  men  have  been  found  to  deny  that  God  is 
elsewhere  or  otherwise  to  be  apprehended  than 
through  the  words  of  that  Book.  A  clearer  proof 
there  could  not  be  that  even  the  devout  Protestant 
divine  may  fall  into  a  sort  of  fetich- worship,  and 
sacrifice  all  other  sources  of  Divine  truth  and  knowl- 
edge to  the  one  which  he  has  idolised.  The  apostolic 
advice,  "  Little  children,  keep  yourselves  from  idols," 
was  not  of  merely  temporary  application,  and  should, 
oftener  than  it  has  been,  be  taken  to  themselves  by 
theologians  and  the  clergy. 

589 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE    OF    GOD 

There  is  no  excuse  for  such  Bibliolatry  as  I  have 
referred  to  in  the  Bible  itself.  There  is  no  narrow- 
ness or  exclusiveness  or  agnosticism  there.  The 
Bible  is  constantly  pointing  us  to  God's  disclosures 
of  Himself  in  nature  and  history,  in  the  control  of 
human  life,  and  in  the  direction  of  the  movements 
of  the  human  heart.  It  appropriates  on  every  page 
the  teachings  of  the  oldest  and  most  comprehensive 
revelation  of  God, — the  universe  itself.  The  teach- 
ing of  the  Bible  in  this  connection  cannot  be  better 
summarised  than  in  its  own  words, — "  the  invisible 
things  of  God  from  the  creation  of  the  world  are 
clearly  seen,  being  understood  by  the  things  that 
are  made,  even  His  eternal  power  and  Godhead." 

11.  A  second  agnostic  position  as  regards  knowl- 
edge of  God  is  that  of  those  who  grant  in  words  that 
we  can  know-God,  yet  who  so  describe  what  they 
call  knowledge  of  God  as  to  eviscerate  it  of  much,  if 
not  all,  of  its  natural  and  proper  meaning,  and  leave 
practically  little  or  no  real  distinction  between 
knowing  God  and  not  knowing  Him. 

That  position  was  not  quite  unknown  even  in  the 
early  Christian  Church.  To  many  of  its  teachers  the 
revelation  of  God  in  Christ  as  set  forth  in  Scripture 
came  home  with  an  intensity  of  conviction  that  made 
them  deem  all  attempts  at  a  reasoned  knowledge  of 
the  Divine  existence,  nature,  and  attributes  needless 
and  futile.  They  further  so  emphasised  the  tran- 
scendence, the  incomprehensibility,  the  ineffableness 
of  God  as  to  be  suspicious  of  all  definite  thought  or 
speech  concerning  Him,  and  hence  gave  utterance 
to  many  apparently  agnostic  statements   regarding 

590 


DOCTEINES    OF  KING   AND   BEOWNE 

man's  knowledge  of  God.  There  followed  in  the 
same  track  some  of  the  later  Christian  fathers  and 
many  of  the  medieval  schoolmen,  whose  views  of  a 
doda  ignoraniia  were  accepted  and  developed  into  a 
form  of  philosophy  by  Sir  Wm.  Hamilton  and  Dean 
Mansel. 

A  quite  distinct  and  definite  example,  however,  of 
the  kind  of  agnosticism  to  which  I  refer  may,  per- 
haps, be  correctly  held  to  have  only  made  its  first  ap- 
pearance in  the  eighteenth  century,  when  a  very 
learned  and  able  Irish  prelate,  Archbishop  King, 
published  a  work  entitled  Divine  Predestination  con- 
sistent with  the  Freedom  of  Man's  Will  (1709).  He 
there  maintained  that  all  the  attributes  of  God  desig- 
nated by  the  names  of  human  characteristics  are  of  a 
nature  wholly  different  from  those  of  man,  and  that 
the  latter  are,  in  fact,  mere  analogies  or  emblems  of 
the  Divine  attributes.  And  obviously  if  he  could 
have  made  out  his  contention  to  that  effect  he  would 
have  gone  far  to  prove  his  thesis.  At  least  he  would 
have  shown  that  it  was  impossible  to  say  what  divine 
predestination,  or  anything  divine,  was  or  was  not 
consistent  with.  Another  Irish  prelate  of  the  same 
period.  Bishop  Browne,  so  far  followed  the  lead  of 
the  Archbishop,  but  did  not  go  quite  so  far.  In  two 
treatises — respectively  entitled  The  Procedure,  Ex- 
tent, and  Limits  of  Human  Understanding  (1728), 
and  Things  Supernatural  and  Divine  conceived  by 
Analogy  with  things  Natural  and  Human  (1733) — 
he  modified  the  doctrine  of  King,  without,  however, 
substantially  altering  it.  Bishop  Berkeley  had  more 
perspicacity.     He  saw  that  such  teaching  was  radi- 

591 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

cally  erroneous  and  inevitably  tended  to  complete 
theological  scepticism.  Hence  he  made  a  powerful 
and  essentially  just  attack,  or  rather  series  of  attacks, 
on  it,  as  being  an  implicit  denial  of  Deity  and  His 
attributes,  a  wholly  unintelligible  view  of  what  was 
meant  by  them.  He  conjoined  therewith  his  cele- 
brated and  richly  suggestive  hypotheses  of  universal 
immaterialism  and  of  symbolism.  His  views  on  the 
subjects  referred  to  were  intimately  connected  in  the 
mind  of  Berkeley  and  presented  with  wonderful  skill 
and  attractiveness,  but  they  are  not  necessarily  inter- 
dependent.    One  may  be  taken  and  another  left. 

In  the  German  Post-Kantian  schools  of  philosophy 
and  theology  there  has  been  much  religious  agnosti- 
cism of  the  kind  to  which  I  refer.  For  that  Kant 
and  Schleiermacher  were  both  in  no  small  measure 
responsible.  Romanticism  also  greatly  aided.  It 
was  the  social  medium  most  favourable  for  the 
growth  and  spread  of  religious  agnosticism,  symbol- 
ism, and  the  like.  Schelling  by  his  lectures  and 
Creuzer  by  a  very  learned  and  original  work  (Sym- 
holik  u.  Mythologie  der  alien  Yolker,  1812-15)  made 
Mythology  a  favourite  study  of  the  romanticists, 
and  the  most  generally  accepted  explanation  of  it 
the  theory  that  religion  originated  in  a  primitive 
revelation  the  content  of  which  was  too  profound  for 
ordinary  men  either  rightly  to  apprehend  or  accu- 
rately to  retain,  and  therefore  that  there  naturally 
arose  a  priestly  caste  which,  in  order  to  preserve  the 
message  of  revelation  from  being  altogether  lost, 
was  led  to  invent  and  to  communicate  to  the  people 
"  myths  "  which  were  not  themselves  direct  expres- 

592 


THE  EITSCHLIAN   THEOLOGY 

sions  of  religious  truths  but  symbols  of  such  truths 
drawn  from  physical  nature.  Many  other  scholars 
followed  "them  on  that  agnostic  path.  At  the  same 
time  Apelt,  Fries,  De  Wette,  and  other  philosophers 
drew  a  sharp  distinction  between  religious  knowledge 
and  ordinary  or  theoretic  knowledge.  To  the  former 
they  ascribed  only  an  imaginative  or  aesthetic  value. 
Thus  the  mythologists  and  philosophers  referred  to 
co-operated  in  introducing  a  theological  agnosticism. 
The  Ritschlian  divines  of  to-day  are  still  on  the 
same  path, — one  which,  to  make  use  of  Carlyle's 
phrase,  "  leads  painfully  no-whither."  They  repre- 
sent religious  knowledge  as  consisting  merely  of 
value-judgments  while  other  knowledge  consists  of 
existential  judgments^  or,  in  equivalent  terms,  the 
former  as  resting  on  what  is  spiritually  helpful  while 
the  latter  is  composed  of  affirmations  ascertained  to 
be  really  true.  The  most  distinctive  feature  of  the 
Ritschlian  theology  is  its  claim  to  be  independent 
of  philosophy,  free  from  all  contamination  of  meta- 
physics, separate  from  all  natural  knowledge,  drawn 
exclusively  from  the  revelation  of  God  in  Christ. 
The  legitimacy  of  ISTatural  Theology  is  denied.  No 
recognition  of  any  revelation  of  God  is  granted  ex- 
cept that  in  Scripture,  and  only  there  in  so  far  as 
there  is  the  revelation  of  God  in  Christ.  Theology 
is  represented  to  be  incapable  of  attaining  to  any 
theoretic  knowledge  of  God,  and  to  have  to  do  only 
with  what  God  is  felt  to  be  in  the  religious  experi- 
ence of  the  Christian.  That  is  to  say,  it  is  described 
as  having  for  its  task  to  set  forth  regarding  God  not 
theoretical   but   practical   judgments, — not   affirma- 

593 


AGNOSTICISM   AS   TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

tions  which  really  apply  to  God  in  Himself  but  affir- 
mations which  tell  us  what  He  is  woi^th  to  us — i.e., 
value-judgments,  which  although  they  in  no  way  ex- 
press what  God  really  is,  may  enable  us  to  overcome 
the  evil  in  the  world  and  to  lead  a  Christian  life. 

Such  a  foundation  is  surely  a  very  strange  one  on 
which  to  attempt  to  raise  a  Christian  theology, — one 
as  insecure  as  could  well  be  chosen, — one  anti-scien- 
tific and  anti-rational  to  the  very  core.  The  claim 
made  for  itself  by  the  Ritschlian  theology  is  like  that 
of  a  physics  which  demands  independence  of  mathe- 
matics, or  of  a  chemistry  which  refuses  to  recognise 
the  laws  of  physics.  The  vanity  of  its  pretension 
to  independence  of  philosophy  is  seen  in  the  fact 
that  the  claim  itself  has  no  other  basis  or  support 
than  an  unsound  philosophy.  It  rests  wholly  on 
agnosticism  as  to  reason  and  on  the  Kantian  reduc- 
tion of  religion  to  a  mode  of  representing  the  moral 
ideal.  It  assumes  that  Kant's  philosophy  as  modified 
in  certain  respects  by  Lotze  is  the  basis  of  theology. 
But  that  is  an  enormous  assumption  were  it  only 
because  of  the  immense  amount  of  epistemology 
and  metaphysics  presupposed  under  the  pretension 
that  theology  is  independent  of,  and  distinct  from, 
philosophy.  True,  Ritschl  fancied  that  what  he  took 
from  Kant  and  Lotze  was  merely  a  theory  of  cogni- 
tion; but  therein  he  greatly  erred,  for  the  episte- 
mology of  both  Kant  and  Lotze  was  at  every  step  also 
a  metaphysics, — a  series  of  affirmations  or  negations 
as  to  all  categories  of  ultimate  thinkable  things,  from 
empty  space  and  time  to  the  ens  realissimum.  A 
theologian  who  assumed  the  truth  of  the  Kantian 

594 


INCONSISTENCIES  OF  EITSCHLIANISM 

epigtemology  as  modified  by  Lotze  had  no  more  right 
to  regard  his  theology  as  independent  of  philosophy 
and  metaphysics  than  another  who  assumed  the  truth 
of  the  dialectic  system  which  Hegel  sought  to  sub- 
stitute for  the  Kantian  criticism. 

That  Ritschl  and  his  followers  should  have  sought 
to  keep  clear  of  philosophy  was  natural  enough. 
Philosophy  seeks  truth.  Theology,  in  the  view  which 
they  have  given  of  it,  really  does  not.  It  has  not 
to  deal  with  truth  at  all  but  with  judgments  of  value, 
• — with  conceptions  which  have  the  merit,  whether 
they  be  true  or  false,  of  helping  us  to  overcome  the 
temptations  of  the  world  and  to  attain  the  ethical 
goods  of  life.  A  system  of  that  kind,  one  which  is 
content  with  merely  subjective  satisfaction  and  in- 
different to  truth,  is  of  its  very  nature  hostile  to  phi- 
losophy, and  quite  consistently  pretends,  as  Ritsch- 
lianism  has  so  often  done,  that  theology  is  indifferent 
to  the  truth  or  falsehood  of  philosophy,  and  that 
what  is  called  true  in  theology  is  not  to  be  rejected 
because  it  may  be  found  false  in  philosophy  or  in 
any  of  the  branches  of  inquiry  which  aim  at  the 
discovery  of  truth.  A  judgment  of  value,  a  so-called 
theological  truth,  may  accordingly  be  a  real,  a  philo- 
sophical, a  historical,  a  scientific  falsehood.  Thus 
it  may  be  quite  justifiable  as  a  demand  of  religion 
to  afiSrm  the  legitimacy  of  faith  in  Christ  as  God, 
although  outside  of  religion  it  may  be  quite  certain 
that  Christ  was  merely  a  man  concerning  whom  it 
is  very  difficult  to  know  accurately  what  He  either 
said  or  did;  and  incumbent  on  every  Christian  to 
hold  to  the  belief  that  Jesus  rose  from  the  dead, 

595 


AGNOSTICISM   AS   TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

although  it  must  seem  to  him  as  a  scientist  altogether 
untenable.  Faith,  that  is  to  say,  must  compel  the 
Christian  man  to  regard  as  a  truth  what  his  reason 
assures  him  to  be  a  falsehood. 

Surely  such  book-keeping  by  double  entry  can 
only  lead  to  bankruptcy  of  faith  or  reason  or  both. 
There  is  no  warrant  for  it.  The  mind  of  man  is  not 
naturally  or  necessarily  self-contradictory.  There  is 
no  essential  antagonism  between  theoretical  and 
practical  judgments — judgments  of  truth  and  judg- 
ments of  value — possible.  On  the  contrary,  the 
latter  imply  the  former.  Judgments  true  in  theory 
are  never  false  in  practice^  and  judgments  true  in 
practice  are  never  false  in  theory.  Any  judgment 
which  is  untrue  has  no  value.  Luther,  in  some  of 
his  rashest  moments,  expressed  himself  as  if  he  had 
adopted  the  most  immoral  and  irrational  tenet  of 
medieval  sophistry, — the  tenet  of  a  twofold  truth, 
or  that  what  is  true  in  philosophy  may  be  false  in 
theology,  and  vice  versa.  But  surely  it  is  rather  an 
extravagant  homage  to  his  memory  to  choose  just 
that  piece  of  portentous  folly  as  the  very  comer- 
stone  of  a  theological  system.  Truth  is  one  and  can 
never  be  divided  against  itself.  What  is  true  in  any 
one  province  of  inquiry  or  of  experience  will  be 
found  to  be  in  harmony  with  all  that  is  true  in  every 
other. 

The  author,  however,  who  presented  the  form  of 
religious  agnosticism  under  consideration  in  its  most 
attractive  light  was  not  a  German  but  a  French  theo- 
logian, the  late  Professor  Auguste  Sabatier.  In 
1892-93  he  published  in  the  Bevue  de  Lausanne  and 

596 


SABATIER'S   THEORY   OF   KNOWLEDGE 

the  Bevue  Chretienne  an  Essai  d'une  theorie  critique 
de  la  connaissance  which  now  forms,  with  some  alter- 
ations, the  last  chapter  of  his  Esquisse  d'une  philo- 
sophie  de  la  religion  d'apres  la  psychologie  et  I'his- 
toire,  1897.  With  great  apparent  lucidity  and  in  a 
most  charming  style  he  there  presented  what  he 
called  "  the  critical  theory  of  knowledge."  As  re- 
gards substance  or  content  the  theory  was  largely 
of  German  origin,  but  as  regards  form  it  was  ex- 
quisitely French,  and  as  regards  spirit  no  one  could 
for  a  moment  doubt  the  religious  sincerity  of  its 
advocate  or  the  warmth  of  his  piety.  But  unfortu- 
nately the  foundations  of  his  theory  were  untrust- 
worthy, and  the  chief  propositions  composing  it 
grave  errors.  His  psychology,  too,  was  as  poor  and 
misleading  as  that  of  Ritschl,  which  is  saying  a  great 
deal.  Accordingly  the  eloquence  which  he  employed 
in  the  advocacy  of  his  views  could  not  conceal  their 
self-contradictoriness  and  superficiality,  as  was  speed- 
ily made  manifest  by  the  criticisms  of  MM.  Godet, 
Berthoud,  Ch.  Bois,  Doumergue,  Pillon,  and  other 
French  and  Swiss  authors.  The  most  thorough  refu- 
tation of  them,  however,  was  the  De  la  connaissance 
religieuse  (1894)  of  M.  Henri  Bois,  professor  of  the- 
ology at  Montauban.  It  has  a  keenness  and  com- 
pleteness which  reminds  one  of  John  Locke's  con- 
troversial writings  at  their  best,  and  also  contains 
very  thorough  discussions  of  a  positive  character  as 
to  the  nature  and  genesis  of  religious  and  scientific 
knowledge,  evolution,  empiricism,  and  a  priorism, 
dogma  and  fact,  revelation  and  authority.  H.  Bois 
seems  to  have  neither  overlooked  nor  spared  any- 

597 


AGNOSTICISM  AS   TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

thing  which  is  ambiguous  or  erroneous  in  M.  Saba- 
tier's  teaching,  and  to  have  left  very  little,  if  any- 
thing, at  once  new  and  true,  to  be  gathered  by  any 
one  coming  after  him,  I  refer,  therefore,  those  of 
my  readers  who  have  perused  M.  Sabatier's  work  to 
the  much  more  accurate  and  profound  treatise  of  M. 
Bois,  and  content  myself  with  a  mere  indication  of 
the  three  chief  errors  of  Sabatier  as  to  the  nature  of 
religious  knowledge. 

1°.  M.  Sabatier  not  only  distinguished  natural 
and  religious  knowledge  from  each  other,  but  severed 
them  from  each  other  and  contrasted  them  as  wholly 
unlike  orders  of  knowledge.  He  did  not  go  so  far  as 
to  represent  them  as  wholly  unrelated,  but  he  repre- 
sented them  as  essentially  different  in  nature  and 
kind.  Therein  he  erred.  Religious  knowledge  so 
far  as  merely  knowledge  is  not  essentially  unlike  but 
essentially  like  other  knowledge.  It  differs  from 
other  knowledge  not  in  so  far  as  it  is  knowledge 
but  inasmuch  as  it  has  another  object  than  other 
knowledge.  But,  of  course,  the  difference  of  the 
object,  and  of  its  relations  and  manifestations  to  the 
subject,  naturally  imply  corresponding  differences  in 
the  knowledge.  Every  kind  of  knowledge  which  has 
a  specific  object  must  be  so  far  different  from  every 
other  kind  of  knowledge.  And  as  the  object  of  re- 
ligious knowledge,  God,  is  a  unique  object,  religious 
knowledge  must  be  also  so  far  unique.  More  than 
any  other  kind  of  knowledge  the  knowledge  of  God 
implies  on  the  part  of  man  not  merely  the  exercise 
of  the  faculties  of  the  intellect,  but  also  the  culture 
of  all  the  good  qualities  of  the  heart,  and  the  right 

598 


SABATIER'S   POSITION 

application  of  all  the  energies  of  the  will.  Man  alone 
among  earthly  creatures  has  been  made  in  the  image 
of  God,  and  therefore  he  alone  among  them  can 
know  God.  Through  mere  intellectual  exertion  man 
can  neither  acquire  a  spiritual  knowledge  of  God  nor 
the  saving  faith  which  is  conjoined  with  it.  "  With 
the  heart  man  believeth  unto  salvation."  "  God  is 
love,"  and  as  love  can  only  be  apprehended  aright 
by  love,  an  honest  and  good  will  is  absolutely  essen- 
tial to  a  true  knowledge  of  God,  and  of  God's  self- 
manifestations.  "  If  any  man  will  do  His  will,  he 
shall  know  of  the  doctrine  whether  it  be  of  God." 

2°.  Sabatier  further  represented  scientific  knowl- 
edge or  knowledge  of  nature  as  always  objective, 
and  religious  knowledge  or  knowledge  of  God  as  al- 
ways subjective.  The  object  of  the  former  he  held 
to  be  always  outside  the  ego^  and  so  to  be  known  as 
independent  of  the  action  or  disposition  of  the  sub- 
ject. The  object  of  the  latter  he  held  to  be  always 
within  the  egOj  and  known  as  belonging  to  the  ego. 
"  A  thinking  and  acting  subject  is^  he  admits,  no 
doubt  necessary  in  making  science,  but  the  character- 
istic of  science  is  nevertheless  to  see  what  it  studies 
apart  from  the  subject,  apart  even  from  the  psychical 
phenomena  that  he  observes  in  the  ego  itself.  Re- 
ligious knowledge,  on  the  other  hand,  he  held  to  have 
no  object  or  phenomenon  that  may  be  apprehended 
outside  the  ego, — none  at  least  which  is  not  imma- 
nent in  the  subject  itself  and  only  reveals  itself  in 
the  personal  activity  of  that  subject.  There  again, 
however,  M.  Sabatier  erred.  Religious  knowledge  is 
DO  more  merely  subjective  than  merely  objective. 

699 


AGNOSTICISM  AS  TO   KNOWLEDGE  OF   GOD 

No  kind  of  knowledge  is  either  merely  subjective  or 
merely  objective.  Even  self-knowledge  is  knowledge 
of  a  self  as  object  by  itself  as  subject.  It  is  only  so 
that  either  self-consciousness  or  self-introspection  is 
realisable,  or  even  conceivable,  as  a  psychological 
fact  or  process.  So  regarded,  self-knowledge  is  as 
truly  knowledge,  and  may  be  as  trustworthy  a  foun- 
dation for  science,  as  perception  and  the  methods  of 
research  employed  in  the  physical  sciences.  Sup- 
press, however,  either  subject  or  object,  and  there 
remains  no  possibility  of  any  kind  of  science.  To 
affirm,  as  M.  Sabatier  did,  that  the  object  of  scientific 
knowledge  is  always  outside  the  subject,  and  that 
consequently  physical  science  is  exclusively  objective 
knowledge,  is  unjust  to  mental  science,  and  not  true 
as  regards  the  physical  sciences,  not  one  of  which  is 
wholly  free  from  subjectivity,  or  can  be  so  unless 
Kant's  Ding  an  sich  be  a  reality.  But  Sabatier  him- 
self pronounced  the  Ding  an  sich  both  a  non-being 
and  non-sense.  Das  Ding  an  sich,  he  said,  ist  ein 
Unding.  Thereby,  however,  he  rejected  what  could 
alone  serve  as  the  cprner-stone  of  his  own  theory. 
His  denial  of  the  Ding  an  sich  was  implicitly  equiv- 
alent to  the  affirmation  that  even  physical  science 
could  not  possibly  become  exclusively  objective.  All 
scientific  knowledge,  from  the  mere  fact  of  its  being 
knowledge  acquired  by  selves  with  self-consciousness, 
with  sensations,  perceptions,  judgments,  volitions  of 
their  own,  is  in  a  large  measure  subjective,  and  can- 
not be  otherwise.  And  no  religious  knowledge  is 
merely  subjective,  because  its  object — God — can 
never   be   reasonably  regarded  as  wholly  identical 

600 


SABATIEE'S   POSITION 

with,  or  wholly  immanent  in,  the  piety  of  human 
souls,  human  selves.  God  is  not  to  be  found  merely, 
as  Sabatier  most  unfortunately  suggested,  in  the 
piety  of  His  worshippers,  in  the  feelings  of  subjec- 
tive life.  Piety  should  recognise  God  not  only  in 
its  own  often  very  dubious  and  superficial  self,  but 
in  all  the  Divine  works  and  dispensations  as  well. 
What  Sabatier  says,  "  to  know  the  world  as  an  as- 
tronomer is  not  to  know  it  religiously,"  is  indeed  so 
far  true ;  but  not  less  true  was  the  saying  of  the  poet, 
"  the  undevout  astronomer  is  mad."  "  The  heavens 
declare  the  glory  of  God ;  and  the  firmament  showeth 
His  handywork."  "  The  invisible  things  of  Him 
from  the  creation  of  the  world  are  clearly  seen,  being 
understood  by  the  things  that  are  made." 

3°.  Sabatier  has  drawn  another  distinction  between 
scientific  and  religious  knowledge.  Scientific  knowl- 
edge he  characterised  as  mechanical,  and  religious 
knowledge  as  teleological,  or,  in  what  he  regarded 
as  equivalent  terms,  the  former  as  concerned  with 
efficient  causes  {causes  proper),  and  the  latter  with 
final  causes  (or  ends).  At  the  same  time  he  ad- 
mitted that  mechanism  and  teleology  do  not  exclude, 
but  imply  each  other;  that  "  cause  "  and  "  end  "  are 
two  aspects  of  the  same  conscious  act,  and  are  im- 
posed on  our  understandings  with  an  equal  necessity. 
There  is,  therefore,  no  need  for  dwelling  on  the  dis- 
tinction referred  to.  On  M.  Sabatier's  own  showing 
there  is  no  essential  antagonism  between  theological 
and  physical  science.  Each  is  a  needed  supplement 
to  the  other.  So  far  from  causality  and  finality  ex- 
cluding each  other,  there  can  be  no  complete  and 

601 


AGNOSTICISM   AS   TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

satisfactory  knowledge  which  is  not  comprehensive 
of  both.  God  is  at  once  the  first  and  the  final  cause 
of  all  that  is. 

4°.  The  last  distinction  drawn  by  M.  Sabatier  be- 
tween religious  and  scientific  knowledge  seems  to  the 
present  writer  to  be  seriously  erroneous.  He  has 
represented  the  former  as  able  only  to  express  itself 
in  metaphors  or  symbols,  and  the  latter  as  constantly 
employing  terms  equivalent  to  its  conceptions  and 
conclusions.  Religion  is  therefore  of  the  nature  of 
feeling  and  imagination,  but  not  of  intelligence  and 
objective  reality;  of  art  and  phantasy,  not  of  reason 
and  well-grounded  experience.  With  eloquence, 
warmth,  and  sincerity  he  has  written  of  knowing 
God,  and  has  attributed  to  God  power,  wisdom, 
righteousness,  goodness,  and  love.  Nevertheless  he 
has  maintained,  or  rather  taken  for  granted  as  if  self- 
evident,  that  our  knowledge  of  God  is  only  meta- 
phorical, or  analogical,  or  symbolical.  Hence  he  has 
been  forced  at  this  stage  of  his  theorising  constantly 
to  employ  the  equivocal  and  misleading  language  of 
agnosticism;  both  to  afiirm  that  we  know  God  and 
to  deny  that  we  know  Him  as  He  really  is;  both  to 
ascribe  and  deny  to  Him  attributes  akin  to  ours;  to 
grant  to  the  ear  that  God  is  knowable,  but  to  deny 
it  to  the  mind  and  heart.  Thus  to  profess  to  know 
God,  and  at  the  same  time  to  represent  God  as  the 
unknown  and  unknowable  subject  of  unknown  and 
unknowable  attributes,  is  far  from  consistent.  If  we 
can  have  no  actual  apprehensive  knowledge  of  God 
as  well  as  of  man,  neither  can  we  have  any  right  to 
pronounce  that  there  is  any  resemblance  or  analogy 

602 


ITS   INCONSISTENCY 

between  them,  or  to  represent  anything  as  even  meta- 
phorical or  symbolical  of  a  God  wholly  unknown. 
We  cannot  know  what  a  symbol  is  unless  we  know 
that  of  which  it  is  a  symbol.  When  I  am  told  in  the 
first  psalm,  for  example,  that  the  godly  man  shall  be 
"  like  a  tree  planted  by  the  rivers  of  water,"  &c.,  in 
order  to  understand  that  metaphorical  or  symbolical 
language  I  must  be  acquainted  both  with  what  is 
implied  in  the  growth  and  flourishing  of  a  tree,  and 
what  are  the  conditions  and  characteristics  of  the 
development  and  prosperity  of  spiritual  life  in  the 
soul.  If  righteousness  and  love  me^n  something 
wholly  different  in  kind  in  God  from  what  is  meant 
by  them  in  man,  they  may  be  as  like  our  wickedness 
and  hate  as  our  righteousness  and  love;  in  fact,  it 
must  be  impossible  for  us  to  say  what  they  are  either 
like  or  unlike.  Besides,  if  righteousness  and  love  or 
any  of  God's  attributes  which  we  profess  to  know 
are  thus  unlike  in  kind  to  any  righteousness  and 
love  of  which  we  have  experience,  how  do  we  know 
the  so-called  Divine  righteousness  and  love?  Only, 
one  would  think,  from  the  rightequsness  and  love 
of  which  we  have  experience.  Yet  how  can  they  be 
connected  with  a  righteousness  and  love  wholly  dif- 
ferent from  them  in  kind?  No  inference  will  con- 
nect them.  Any  argument  which  can  be  formed  to 
link  them  together  must  be  a  fallacy, — a  syllogism  of 
four  terms.  The  view,  then,  with  which  I  have  been 
dealing  seems  to  be  at  once  thoroughly  agnostic  and 
thoroughly  erroneous.  It  implies  that  all  knowledge 
of  God  is  imreal,  and  all  thoughts  of  Him  meaning- 
less. Were  it  true,  there  could  be  no  rational  and 
moral  communion  between  God  and  man. 

603 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 


IV.    THE    AGNOSTICISM    OF    HAMILTON,    MANSEL,    AND 
SPENCEK 

Agnosticism  has  never  been  advocated  with  more 
sincerity,  earnestness,  and  ability  than  the  form  of  it 
with  which  I  have  now  to  deal.  Yet  it  has  been  so 
often  subjected  to  careful  and  competent  criticism 
that  it  does  not  seem  necessary  to  dwell  on  it  other- 
wise than  briefly. 

I.  Sir  Wm.  Hamilton's  agnosticism  rested  on  that 
of  Kant,  and  was  a  quite  natural  sequel  to  it.  He 
followed  Kant  in  denying  that  God  can  be  known 
while  affirming  that  God  ought  to  be  believed  in.  He 
was  not,  however,  a  disciple  of  Kant.  He  adhered  in 
the  main  to  the  teaching  of  Dr.  Thomas  Reid,  al- 
though in  various  respects  he  dissented  from  it  and 
attempted  to  improve  it.  The  "  Transcendental 
Idealism  "  of  Kant,  on  the  other  hand,  and  the  whole 
of  German  philosophy  so  far  as  it  was  the  product  or 
evolution  of  that  "  idealism,"  he  rejected.  The  hy- 
pothesis of  the  entire  subjectivity  of  the  perceived 
world  he  regarded  as  a  dogmatic  absurdity  inconsist- 
ent with  all  true  criticism  of  the  perceptive  faculty. 
He  attributed  to  the  mind  immediate  intuitive  power, 
and  held  that  in  perception  there  is  direct  apprehen- 
sion of  external  phenomena,  as  there  is  of  internal 
phenomena  in  introspective  consciousness.  His  own 
doctrine  he  held  to  be  not  idealism  but  realism,  not 
representationism  but  presentationism,  and  conse- 
quently inconsistent  with  all  scepticism,  whereas 
Kant's  so-called  "  critical  idealism "  he  deemed 
necessarily  and  essentially  sceptical.     Yet  notwith- 

604 


hamilto:n^  and  kant 

standing  that  conscious  antagonism  to  Kant,  he  was 
largely  influenced  by  the  great  German  thinker.  He 
was  the  first  Scottish  professor  to  make  any  earnest 
.  study  of  Kant's  writings,  and  naturally  he  could  not 
fail  to  come  under  his  spell  both  to  his  advantage 
and  disadvantage.  It  was  to  his  disadvantage  so  far 
as  regards  the  subject  under  consideration. 

He  followed  Kant  in  denying  that  God  can  be 
known  by  us,  while  at  the  same  time  he  affirmed  that 
we  may  and  ought  to  believe  in  the  Divine  existence 
on  the  testimony  of  our  moral  nature  and  of  Script- 
ure. He  allowed  that  although  we  do  not  know  what 
God  is,  we  can  Tcnow  that  He  is.  He  entirely  de- 
nied, however,  that  we  can  know  God,  and  even  held 
that  God  is  not,  and  cannot  be,  what  we  think  Him 
to  be.  To  that  very  dogmatic  and  seemingly  alto- 
gether unprovable  view  he  gave  very  strong  expres- 
sion. "  To  think,"  he  says,  "  that  God  is,  as  we  can 
think  Him  to  be,  is  blasphemy.  The  last  and  highest 
consecration  of  all  true  religion  must  be  an  altar 
'Ayvcoaro)  Beep.  To  the  unknown  and  unknowable 
God."  Sir  William  was  unfortunate  in  his  refer- 
ence to  Scripture.  'Ayvwcrrq)  Oecji  means  neither  "  the 
unknown  "  nor  "  the  unknowable  God  "  and  still  less 
"  the  unknown  and  unknowable  GodP  but  merely 
"an-  unknowTi  God."  The  Athenians,  like  many 
other  polytheists,  thought  some  recognition  and  rev- 
erence due  not  only  to  known  and  native  but  also  to 
unknown  and  foreign  gods;  and  it  was  quite  natural 
that  they  should  often  feel  doubtful  as  to  what  god 
had  favoured  or  afflicted  them,  and  anxious  lest  some 
deitv  had  been  overlooked  by  them.     One  God,  the 

605 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE    OF    GOD 

only  God,  can  alone  satisfy  the  human  mind  and 
heart,  and  although  He  transcends  finite  comprehen- 
sion, St.  Paul  cannot  have  regarded  Him  as  either 
unknoA\Ti  or  unknowable,  seeing  that  he  readily  un- 
dertook to  declare  to  the  Athenians  who  and  what 
the  true  God  really  was.  Obviously  St.  Paul  did  not 
consider  it  blasphemy  to  think  God  to  be  what  he 
(St.  Paul)  thought  Him  to  be ;  and  as  obviously  there 
is  nothing  to  justify  the  statement  that  "  to  think 
that  God  is,  as  we  think  Him  to  be,  is  blasphemy." 
We  can  and  do  think,  although,  of  course,  only  in 
our  imperfect  human  ways,  that  God  is  the  self-exist- 
ent and  eternal  cause  of  all  finite,  temporary,  and 
dependent  beings;  that  He  is  the  ultimate  and  inex- 
haustible source  of  all  power,  life,  lav/,  and  order  in 
the  universe;  that  He  is  infinite  and  eternal,  omnipo- 
tent and  omniscient,  and  wise,  good,  just,  and  holy 
far  beyond  our  best  conceptions.  AVhere  is  the  blas- 
phemy in  so  thinking?  Is  it  not,  on  the  contrary, 
blasphemy  to  deny  it  either  in  thought  or  speech? 

The  affirmation  that  God  is  unknowable  is  rested 
by  Hamilton  on  three  principles — viz.,  1°,  All  human 
knowledge  is  relative;  2°,  All  human  thinking  is  con- 
ditioned; and  3°,  The  notions  of  the  Infinite  and  the 
Absolute,  as  entertained  by  man,  are  "  mere  nega- 
tions of  thought."  They  are  all  very  important  prin- 
ciples in  the  Hamiltonian  philosophy.  Indeed  they 
were  regarded  by  Hamilton  himself  as  its  most  im- 
portant principles.  All  the  arguments  directed  by 
him  against  the  cognoscibility  of  God  rest  on  them. 
They  supply  the  ultimate  major  principle  in  each 
case.     A  thorough  discussion  of  them  would  occupy 

60G 


THE   AGNOSTICISM    OF    HAMILTON 

much  i;kne,  but  I  shall  deal  with  them  very  briefly, 
and  only  in  their  bearing  on  the  theological  question 
in  hand. 

Hamilton  agreed  with  Kant  in  denying  that  God 
can  be  known,  yet  it  is  only  justice  to  him  to  say 
that  his  relation  to  Kant  in  the  matter  was  not  one 
of  dependence.  Kant's  criticism  of  the  theistic 
proofs  rested  on  no  philosophical  theory  or  specific 
principles.  It  consisted  of  objections  which  had  been 
often  urged  and  as  often  shown  to  be  paltry  or  irrele- 
vant, whereas  those  of  Hamilton  had  at  least  the 
merit  of  resting  on  definite  and  homogeneous  "  prin- 
ciples,"— the  principles  of  a  philosophy  which  he 
held  to  be  not  only  distinct  from,  but  antagonistic  to, 
that  of  Kant. 

Much  of  the  argumentation  on  the  strength  of 
which  he  so  confidently  affirmed  God  to  be  unknow- 
able rested  on  the  first  of  his  principles, — the  princi- 
ple that  "  all  human  knowledge  is  relative."  From 
that  he  inferred  that  God,  in  whose  existence  he  was 
a  sincere  believer,  could  not  be  known  as  what  He  is, 
an  eternal  and  self-existent  Being,  the  Absolute 
Being,  or,  in  brief,  "  the  Absolute."  What,  then, 
did  he  mean  by  "  the  relativity  of  cognition "  or 
"the  principle  of  relativity"?  Unfortunately  not 
one  thing  but  three, — three  significations,  two  of 
which  are  true  but  do  not  in  the  least  degree  imply 
that  God  is  "  unknowable,"  and  the  third  of  which, 
the  only  one  from  which  the  incognoscibility  of  God 
can  be  inferred,  is  false,  and  in  no  respect  warrants 
men  regarding  God  as  "  unknowable." 

The  first  meaning  given  by  Hamilton  to  the  prin- 
607 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

ciple  of  relativity  was  that  nothing  can  be  known 
entirely  in  and  for  itself,  or  out  of  relation  to  all  else : 
nothing,  that  is  to  say,  can  be  known  as  an  utterly 
indeterminate  and  entirely  isolated  entity,  without 
any  relation  to  anything,  and  without  either  internal 
distinctions  or  external  manifestations.  That  is  not 
to  be  denied,  and  no  sane  person  denies  it.  Nobody 
holds  that  God  is  known  without  reference  to  His 
works.  His  manifestations.  His  attributes.  His  rela- 
tionships. The  Absolute,  as  defined  by  Hamilton, 
that  which  exists  in  and  by  itself,  aloof  from  and  out 
of  all  relation,  does  not  and  cannot  exist.  It  is  a 
pure  absurdity  and  not  to  be  identified  with  God.  A 
Being  without  attributes — with  nothing  distinctive  of 
it — out  of  all  relations — who  neither  causes,  sustains, 
nor  rules  the  universe — is  an  unintelligible  and  in- 
credible being  and  no  God.  Not  to  know  such  a  so- 
called  God  could  be  no  privation  at  all.  Relation  is 
not  to  be  identified,  as  it  was  by  Sir  W.  Hamilton, 
with  restriction.  The  absence  of  power  to  enter  into 
relationship  is  real  restriction.  Just  because  the 
Absolute  Being,  the  self-existent  Being,  God  is  the 
most  related  of  all  beings  and  the  most  closely  con- 
nected with  all  contingent  things. 

The  second  of  Hamilton's  significations  of  the 
relativity  of  knowledge  is  that  nothing  can  be  known 
except  in  relation  to  a  self  and  its  powers  of  know- 
ing; or,  in  his  own  words,  "Knowledge  is  relative, 
1°,  Because  existence  is  not  cognisable,  absolutely 
and  in  itself,  but  only  in  special  modes;  2°,  Because 
these  modes  can  be  kno^vn  only  if  they  stand  in  a 
certain  relation  to  our  faculties;  and  3°,  Because  the 

608 


THE   AGNOSTICISM    OF   HAMILTON 

modes,  thus  relative  to  our  faculties,  are  presented  to, 
and  known  by,  the  mind  only  under  modifications, 
determined  by  these  faculties  themselves."  Now 
that  signification  has  in  it  what  is  additional  to  the 
content  of  the  first  but  not  what  contradicts  it,  and  it 
too  is  quite  consistent  with  the  cognoscibility  of  God, 
and  the  consequent  reasonableness  of  belief  in  the 
Absolute  intelligently  apprehended.  It  is  a  signifi- 
cation so  manifestly  true  that  one  is  apt  to  call  it  a 
truism ;  but  truism  or  not,  it  is  a  truth  of  value,  and 
Hamilton  did  well  to  emphasise  its  worth.  Nothing 
either  absolute  or  relative — nothing  from  the  infi- 
nitely great  to  the  infinitesimally  small — is  knowable 
apart  from  a  knowing  mind.  Knowing  is  a  mind 
acting,  an  intelligence  energising,  in  the  form  called 
knowing. 

The  third  signification  assigned  by  Hamilton  to 
the  proposition  "  all  knowledge  is  relative  "  was  "  all 
knowledge  is  phenomenal."  That  meaning,  however, 
is  of  a  very  different  character  from  the  first  and 
second.  All  knowledge  is  relative  does  not  imply 
that  all  knowledge  is  phenomenal.  No  number  of 
repetitions  that  it  does  in  either  the  first  or  second 
sense,  or  in  any  reasonable  sense  whatever,  can  be 
of  any  force  or  relevancy,  but  must  be  merely  the 
reiterated  assertion  of  a  very  obvious  error  which 
rests  on  a  thoroughly  false  conception  both  of  the 
nature  of  knowledge  and  of  the  nature  of  the  Abso- 
lute. That  all  knowledge  is  relative  in  the  sense 
that  every  being  or  thing  is  known  only  in  deter- 
minate modes  of  existence  and  in  relation  to  other 
beings  or  things  is  quite  true,  and  no  person  can 

609 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

reasonably  suppose  that  God  is  otherwise  known. 
That  all  knowledge  is  relative  in  the  sense  that  every 
being  or  thing  is  known  by  us  in  relation  to  our  facul- 
ties of  knowing  is  also  true,  and  what  man  in  his 
senses  would  contest  its  application  to  our  knowledge 
of  God?  That  all  knowledge  is  relative  in  the  sense 
that  all  knowledge  is  confined  to  phenomena  is  false, 
and  as  false  with  reference  to  our  knowledge  of  God 
as  to  our  knowledge  of  other  beings  and  things.  The 
relativity  of  human  thought,  instead  of  disabling  the 
mind  from  transcending  mere  phenomena,  is  the 
very  condition  or  law  of  thought  which  enables  and 
even  compels  intelligence  to  transcend  mere  phe- 
nomena. It  prevents  thought,  indeed,  from  dispens- 
ing with  phenomena — from  ever  eliminating  from 
itself  a  phenomenal  element, — but  so  far  from  con- 
fining or  restricting  it  to  phenomena,  it  makes  such 
confinement  or  restriction  impossible.  Quality  can- 
not be  thought  of  apart  from  a  subject.  Quantity  in 
space  or  time  cannot  be  conceived  without  the 
implication  of  immensity  and  eternity.  An  event 
carries  the  mind  to  a  cause;  the  derivative  supposes 
the  self-subsistent ;  the  finite  offered  to  perception 
introduces  to  an  infinite  supplied  by  thought,  &c. 
Those  correlatives  are  not  mutually  exclusive  but 
mutually  implicative.  They  are  on  a  perfect  equal- 
ity of  intellectual  validity.  Hence  the  relativity  of 
human  knowledge,  instead  of  disabling  the  mind 
from  transcending  mere  phenomena,  enables,  and 
even  compels — nay,  constantly  compels — it  to  do 
so. 

Sir  Wm.   Hamilton,   however,   had  what  he    re- 
610 


HAMILTON'S   POSITION 

garded  as  a  second  fundamental  principle  which  en- 
titled him  to  affirm  the  incognoscibility  of  the  Infi- 
nite and  Absolute;  and  that  principle  he  based  on  the 
alleged  axiom  that  "  to  think  is  to  condition," — an 
axiom  which  he  believed  to  be  an  insurmountable 
barrier  to  all  possible  knowledge  of  God  as  infinite 
or  absolute,  seeing  that  the  infinite  and  absolute  are 
forms  of  the  unconditioned,  and  the  unconditioned  is 
necessarily  unknowable.  In  his  own  vigorous  lan- 
guage: "As  the  conditionally  limited  (which  we  may 
briefly  call  the  conditioned)  is  the  only  possible  ob' 
ject  of  knowledge  and  of  positive  thought,  thought 
necessarily  supposes  conditions.  To  think  is  to  con- 
dition, and  conditional  limitation  is  the  fundamental 
law  of  the  possibility  of  thought.  For,  as  the  grey- 
hound cannot  outstrip  his  shadow,  nor  (by  a  more 
appropriate  simile)  the  eagle  outsoar  the  atmosphere 
in  which  he  floats,  and  by  which  alone  he  may  be  sup- 
ported, so  the  mind  cannot  transcend  the  sphere  of 
limitation,  within  and  through  which  exclusively 
possibility  of  thought  is  realised."  ^  The  statement 
suggests  some  doubts  which  are  not  removed  and 
some  queries  which  have  not  been  answered.  Grant- 
ing that  the  Infinite  cannot  be  comprehended  or 
imagined,  may  it  not  be  apprehended?  Ought  not 
comprehension  and  apprehension  to  have  been  dis- 
tinguished? It  is  only  apprehensive  knowledge  that 
is  generally  claimed.  Further,  if  the  Unconditioned 
be,  as  Hamilton  affirmed,  unknowable,  how  did  he 
know  that  it  was  a  genus  or  generic  notion  with  two 

'  Discussions  on  Philosophy,  p.  14.  The  argument  is  often  re- 
peated, but  is  little  varied  in  statement,  and  the  proposition  on 
which  it  wholly  turns  is  never  very  precisely  explained. 

611 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE    OF    GOD 

specific  notions  involved  in  it,  viz.,  the  Infinite  and 
the  Absolute?  and  especially  how  did  he  arrive  at 
his  species?  We  only  form  a  notion  of  species  by 
adding  to  the  genus  some  differentia,  some  condition 
which  distinguishes  the  species  from  other  species. 
But  it  seems  manifest  that  there  is  no  place  for  that 
process  in  connection  with  the  Unconditioned.  A 
species  of  unconditioned  determined  or  discriminated 
by  a  condition  is  a  self-contradiction  and  absurdity. 
Again,  was  Hamilton  justified  in  considering  the  In- 
finite and  Absolute  as  distinct  and  mutually  exclusive 
species  of  the  Unconditioned, — the  Infinite  being  the 
unconditionally  unlimited  and  the  Absolute  the  un- 
conditionally limited?  I  think  not.  The  uncondi- 
tionally unlimited  is  no  more  than  simply  unlimited, 
and  the  unconditionally  limited  is  the  unconditionally 
conditioned  or  unlimitedly  limited — i.e.,  the  ex- 
pressly self-contradictory,  the  purely  absurd.  The 
Absolute  and  the  Infinite  are  not  to  be  represented 
as  distinct  and  mutually  exclusive;  on  the  contrary, 
the  Absolute  is  to  be  conceived  of  as  infinite  and  the 
Infinite  as  absolute  if  either  of  them  is  to  be  re- 
garded in  a  reasonable  manner.  They  are  insepa- 
rable, not  exclusive. 

Hamilton's  dictum  "  To  think  is  to  condition  "  has, 
like  his  proposition  "  All  knowledge  is  relative,"  at 
least  three  meanings,  and  they  may  not  be  all  alike 
true.  It  seems  to  me  that  they  are  not  all  true,  and 
that  only  the  meanings  which  are  not  true  are  incon- 
sistent with  the  cognoscibility  of  the  unconditioned. 
The  most  common  signification  of  the  term  "  condi- 
tion "  is  that  which  precedes  and  renders  possible 

613 


THE  AGN^OSTICISM  OF  HAMILTON 

something  else.  In  that  sense  one  object  is  condi- 
tioned by  another  when  it  is  dependent  upon  it  and 
conditions  another  when  it  is  a  ground  of  that  other 
object's  existence.  If  "  to  condition  "  be  thus  under- 
stood, "  to  think  is  to  condition  "  must  mean  that 
whatever  is  thought  of  is  conceived  of  as  dependent, 
as  derivative.  But  is  there  any  warrant  for  such  a 
view?  I  am  not  aware  of  any.  Has  any  proof  of  it 
been  attempted?  E^one.  It  takes  for  granted  that 
God  being  not  a  dependent  being  cannot  be  known; 
but  not  a  particle  of  evidence  is  adduced  that  only 
a  dependent  being  can  be' known. 

"  To  condition  "  may,  however,  also  mean  "  to 
limit,"  and  that  second  signification  Hamilton  often 
expressly  assigned  to  it.  But  to  say  that  thought  is 
confined  to  the  limited  is  not  only  again  plainly  to 
beg  the  conclusion  which  the  so-called  axiom  "  to 
think  is  to  condition  "  is  professedly  employed  to 
establish,  but  is  itself  an  assertion  manifestly  and 
greatly  in  need  of  proof.  It  needs  it  just  as  much 
as  the  proposition  that  God  is  unknowable,  and,  in 
reality,  is  just  that  conclusion  in  disguise  and  put 
forward  as  a  premise. 

I  refuse,  then,  in  toto,  to  grant  that  "  to  think  is 
to  condition  "  in  either  of  the  senses  already  indi- 
cated. But  the  phrase  may  have  a  third  sense.  "  To 
condition  "  may  mean  "  to  conceive  of  as  having  at- 
tributes,"— as  not  wholly  indefinite  and  indetermi- 
nate, as  a  subject  of  predication.  And  in  that  sense  it 
is  perfectly  true;  but  then  in  that  sense  one  must  be 
dim-eyed  indeed  not  to  see  that  it  affords  no  support 
whatever  to  the  opinion  that  God  cannot  be  known. 

613 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

Hamilton  had  what  he  regarded  as  another — a 
third  principle — entitling  him  to  deny  the  cognosci- 
bility  of  the  Absolute  and  the  Infinite.  The  notion 
of  either  he  affirmed  to  be  "  a  mere  negation  of 
thought."  He  could  not  deny  that  we  have  the 
words  "  infinite  "  and  "  absolute,"  nor  that,  like  all 
other  words,  they  imply  notions  of  some  kind.  Hence 
he  had  to  explain  those  words  and  notions  in  some 
way  in  accordance  with  his  hypothesis.  It  may  suf- 
fice for  our  purpose  to  show  merely  how  he  deals 
with  one  of  them,  "  the  infinite."  God,  he  holds, 
cannot  be  known  as  infinite.  Knowledge  is  only  of 
the  finite.  The  finite  is  knowable,  the  infinite  un- 
knowable. 

Such  an  affirmation,  however,  is  far  from  obviously 
in  accordance  with  his  principle  of  the  relativity  of 
knowledge.  From  that  principle  the  far  more  natural 
inference  would  seem  to  be  that  we  must  know  both 
the  finite  and  the  infinite.  The  finite  and  the  infinite 
are  correlatives.  But  correlatives  imply  each  other 
— are  known  in  and  through  each  other  in  the  same 
act  of  thought.  To  deny  knowledge  of  either  appears 
to  involve  denial  of  knowledge  of  the  other,  one 
being  no  more  knowable  in  and  by  itgelf  than  the 
other.  Yet  Hamilton  confines  knowledge  to  the 
sphere  of  the  finite,  and  excludes  it  from  the  sphere 
of  the  infinite.  Why?  Because  he  supposed  the  idea 
of  the  infinite  to  be  merely  negative,  and  that  of  the 
finite  to  be  positive.  But  there  is  really  no  other 
ground  for  that  supposition  than  that  the  term  finite 
is  positive  and  the  term  infinite  is  negative.  A  most 
superficial  reason!    A  negative  term  does  not  ncces- 

614 


THE  AGNOSTICISM  OF  HAMILTON 

sarily  convey  a  merely  negative  notion.  A  term 
which  does  convey  a  merely  negative  notion  is  one 
which  has  no  meaning  at  all.  The  idea  which  corre- 
sponds to  the  term  infinite  is  not  a  negation,  but  a 
very  different  thing  indeed,  the  negation  of  nega- 
tion, the  negation  of  limitation.  God  is  infinite 
means  that  He  has  unlimited  perfections.  The  In- 
finite is  reality  in  entirety  of  perfection,  or  reality 
minus  defect  and  limitation  of  any  kind.  The  finite 
is  reality  plus  defects  and  limits. 

To  warrant  our  either  denying  the  infinite  or  as- 
suming that  it  cannot  be  known,  we  ought  to  make 
sure  that  there  is  nothing  for  us  to  know  except  the 
finite  or  limited;  that  is  to  say,  we  ought  to  prove 
the  finite  to  be  the  absolute, — to  be  all  that  is  and 
yet  finite.  But  to  know  or  believe  in  the  absolutely 
finite  would  be  far  more  difficult  than  to  know  or 
believe  in  the  absolutely  infinite.  It  would  be  utter- 
ly impossible.  The  absolutely  finite  is  a  self-contra- 
diction. The  limited  implies  always  a  limiting.  .  It 
cannot  be  limited  by  itself;  does  not  suffice  of  itself; 
supposes  somewhat  beyond  itself.  The  absolutely 
finite  must  be  limited  either  by  nothing  or  some- 
thing. If  by  nothing  it  must  be  really  infinite.  If 
by  something  it  must  be  not  an  absolute  but  a  rela- 
tive finite.  There  can  be  no  absolute  finite.  If  the 
finite  is  to  be  intelligible,  and  thought  rational,  the 
infinite  must  be.  Whether  we  consider  the  world, 
or  space,  or  time,  or  being,  it  is  impossible  for  us 
to  escape  the  supplementary  and  correlative  idea  of 
infinity.  The  finite  apart  from  the  infinite  is  the 
more  mysterious  of  the  two. 

615 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

In  a  word,  the  finite  and  the  infinite  being  cor- 
relatives, being  known  in  and  through  each  other, 
necessarily  in  the  same  act  of  thought,  the  knowledge 
of  the  one  is  as  necessary  as  the  knowledge  of  the 
other,  and  knowledge  of  neither  can  be  denied  with- 
out knowledge  of  the  other  being  involved.  To  afiirm 
that  the  finite  is  comprehensible  in  and  by  itself 
alone,  is  as  unwarranted  an  assertion  as  to  affirm  that 
the  infinite  is  so.  The  infinite  could  never  come  into 
apprehension  apart  from  all  thought  of  the  finite,  but 
the  finite  apart  from  all  apprehension  of  the  infinite 
is  also  incognisable.  As  Martineau  has  said:  "  There 
can  be  no  objection  to  call  the  one  '  positive  '  and 
the  other  '  negative,'  provided  it  be  understood  that 
each  is  so  with  regard  to  the  other,  and  that  the 
relation  is  convertible :  the  finite,  for  instance,  being 
the  negative  of  the  infinite,  not  less  than  the  infinite 
of  the  finite."  (Essays,  p.  327.)  Knowledge  of  the 
one,  however,  cannot  be  taken,  and  knowledge  of  the 
othjer  left,  as  knowledge  of  each  depends  upon  knowl- 
edge of  the  other. 

Hamilton  distinctly  denied  that  we  can  know  God 
as  either  infinite  or  absolute,  yet  He  maintained  that 
we  ought  nevertheless  to  believe  in  God.  What,  then, 
did  he  mean  by  knowledge  of  and  belief  in  God  ? 
How  did  he  distinguish  between  knowledge  and  be- 
lief? Strangely  enough,  he  bestowed  little  care  on 
that  part  of  his  theory.  The  following  is  almost  the 
only  explicit  passage  regarding  it  to  be  found  in  his 
writings:  "  We  l:now  what  rests  upon  reason;  we 
believe  what  rests  upon  authority.  But  reason  itself 
must  rest  at  last  upon  authority;  for  the  original  data 

616 


THE  AGNOSTICISM  OF  HAMILTON 

of  reason  do  not  rest  upon  reason,  but  are  necessarily 
accepted  by  reason  on  the  authority  of  what  is  be- 
yond itself.  These  data  are,  therefore,  in  rigid  pro- 
.  priety.  Beliefs  or  Trusts.  Thus  it  is  that,  in  the  last 
resort,  we  must,  per  force,  philosophically  admit  that 
belief  is  the  primary  condition  of  reason,  and  not 
reason  the  ultimate  ground  of  belief." 

It  would  be  difficult,  I  think,  to  fall  into  more 
oversights  or  errors  in  so  short  a  space.  "  We  know" 
says  Hamilton,  "  what  rests  upon  reason."  Yes,  and 
whatever  we  know  we  cannot  but  believe.  "  We 
believe  what  rests  upon  authority."  Wise  men  do 
so  only  when  they  know  the  authority  to  be  true  and 
good.  "  But  reason  itself  must  at  last  rest  upon 
authority."  Certainly  not;  the  reverse  is  the  truth, 
— authority  should  rest  at  last  on  reason:  reason 
alone  can  decide  what  is  rightful  authority  and  what 
is  not.  "  The  original  data  of  reason  do  not  rest 
upon  reason,  but  are  necessarily  accepted  by  reason 
on  the  authority  of  what  is  beyond  itself."  No  asser- 
tion could  be  more  inaccurate.  The  original  data 
of  reason  are  the  primary  perceptions  of  reason, 
necessarily  accepted  by  reason  on  no  authority  but 
its  own, — on  no  other  ground  than  clear  and  imme- 
diate self -evidence.  "  These  data  are,  in  rigid  pro- 
priety. Beliefs  or  Trusts."  But,  with  quite  as  much 
propriety,  they  may  be  called,  and  indeed  are  called 
by  Hamilton  himself.  Cognitions  and  Judgments. 
They  are  beliefs  and  trusts  only  because  primarily 
cognitions  and  judgments.  Thus  Hamilton's  con- 
cluding statement,  that,  "  in  the  last  resort,  we  must, 
per  force,  philosophically  admit  that  belief  is  the 

617 


AGNOSTICISM   AS   TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

primary  condition  of  reason,  and  not  reason  the  ulti- 
mate ground  of  belief,"  must  be  regarded  as  errone- 
ous. 

God  as  infinite  he  maintained  to  be  wholly  incog- 
nisable.  Were  that  so,  belief  in  God  would  be  a 
mere  superstition.  The  idea  of  God  as  an  Infinite 
Person  he  argued  to  be  self -contradictory,  on  the 
ground  that  infinity  and  personality  excluded  each 
other.  Were  that  the  case,  the  idea  of  God  ought  to 
be  rejected.  If  God  is,  the  true  idea  of  God  cannot 
be  self-contradictory.  All  thought  which  is  self- 
contradictory  must  be  unveracious.  God  can  only 
be  truly  thought  of  as  Absolute  Reason,  the  perfect 
realisation  and  satisfaction  of  reason;  certainly  not 
when  thought  of  as  self-contradiction.  "  Credo  quia 
absurdum  "  can  be  the  only  appropriate  motto  of  a 
philosophy  which  holds  that  we  may  believe  in  a 
God  the  very  idea  of  whom  we  can  perceive  to  be 
self-contradictory. 

On  what  ground,  then,  it  may  well  be  asked,  did 
Hamilton  rest  faith  in  God  ?  It  was  on  a  very  strange 
one, — on  "  a  mental  impotency  "  to  which  he  gave 
expression  in  what  he  called  "  the  law  of  the  con- 
ditioned." That  law  he  regarded  as  the  ultimate 
ground  beyond  reason  on  which  faith  in  God  rests. 

Its  nature  is  clearly  described  in  the  two  following 
extracts.  "  The  Conditioned  is  that  which  is  alone 
conceivable  or  cogitable;  the  Unconditioned  that 
which  is  inconceivable  or  incogitable.  The  condi- 
tioned or  the  thinkable  lies  between  two  extremes 
or  poles;  and  each  of  these  extremes  or  poles  is  un- 
conditioned,  each   of  them  inconceivable,   each  of 

618 


THE  AGNOSTICISM  OF  HAMILTON 

them  exclusive  or  contradictory  of  the  other.  Of 
these  two  repugnant  opposites,  the  one  is  that  of 
Unconditional  or  Absolute  Limitation ;  the  other  that 
of  Unconditioned  or  Infinite  Illimitation ;  or,  more 
simply,  the  Absolute  and  the  Infinite;  the  term  abso- 
lute expressing  that  which  is  finished  or  complete, 
the  term  infinite  that  which  cannot  be  terminated  or 
concluded."  ^ 

"  The  conditioned  is  the  mean  between  two  ex- 
tremes— two  inconditionates  exclusive  of  each  other, 
neither  of  which  can  be  conceived  as  possible,  but  of 
which,  on  the  principle  of  contradiction  and  excluded 
middle,  one  must  be  admitted  as  necessary.  We  are 
thus  warned  from  recognising  the  domain  of  our 
knowledge  as  necessarily  coextensive  with  the  horizon 
of  our  faith.  And  by  a  wonderful  revelation  we  are 
thus,  in  the  very  consciousness  of  our  inability  to  con- 
ceive aught  above  the  relative  and  the  finite,  inspired 
with  a  belief  in  the  existence  of  something  uncondi- 
tioned beyond  the  sphere  of  all  comprehensible  real- 
ity." ^  There  we  have  what  is  central  and  most  dis- 
tinctive in  Hamilton's  doctrine  as  to  our  necessary 
ignorance  of  God  yet  our  necessary  belief  in  Him. 
It  rests  on  a  most  extraordinary  conception  of  the 
so-called  law  of  the  conditioned  and  a  strange  want 
of  perception  that  either  the  asserted  incognoscibility 
or  the  asserted  contradiction  of  the  extremes  must 
be  abandoned. 

The  so-called  "  law  "  afiirms  that  all  true  thought 
— all  true  knowledge — lies  between  two   extremes 

'  Metaphysics,  ii.  372,  373,  but  read  also  from  368  to  376. 
'Discussions,  p.  15,  but  see  also  pp.  12-29. 

619 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

which  are  directly  contradictory,  and,  at  the  same 
time,  utterly  unthinkable  and  unknowable.  But 
manifestly  such  an  assertion,  instead  of  being  the 
enunciation  of  a  true  law  of  thought,  is  a.  self -contra- 
diction. If  the  two  extremes  are  both  utterly  un- 
known and  unthinkable  how  can  they  be  either 
known  or  thought  to  be  contradictory?  We  cannot 
know  to  be  contradictory  things  of  which  we  can 
have  no  knowledge.  Hamilton  affirms  as  a  funda- 
mental law  of  thought  that  two  absolutely  unknown 
notions  or  things  are  known  to  be  contradictory  and 
exclusive  of  each  other.  But  the  affirmation  is  an 
absurdity,  seeing  that  before  we  are  entitled  to  pro- 
nounce two  things,  two  terms,  to  be  contradictory, 
we  must  know  something,  and  something  definite, 
about  both, — must  have  apprehended  them,  com- 
posed them,  and  passed  a  judgment  regarding  them, 
founded  on  our  knowledge  of  them.  If  we  know 
nothing  of  two  things  we  cannot  distinguish  them, 
and  if  we  cannot  distinguish  them  we  cannot  reason- 
ably affirm  that  they  are  contradictory  and  exclusive 
of  each  other.  They  may  just  as  well  be  inseparable, 
complementary,  or  even  identical.  Hamilton  thought 
he  showed  the  two  extremes  to  be  contradictory. 
But  how  ?  By  means  of  the  definitions  which  he  gave 
them.  Just  so.  But  how  could  he  define  things 
which  he  did  not  know?  Is  it  not  an  elementary 
principle  of  logic  that  definition  requires  knowledge? 
There  is  another  reason  for  rejecting  Sir  Wm. 
Hamilton's  so-called  "  law,"  at  least  in  the  form 
which  he  gave  to  it.  The  "  principle  of  excluded 
middle  "  does  not  admit  of  what  the  conditioned  is 

620 


THE  AGNOSTICISM  OF  MANSEL 

said  to  be, — does  not  admit  of  a  mean  between 
two  contradictories.  It  excludes  precisely  what 
Hamilton  affirmed.  The  notion  of  mentioning  "  the 
law  of  excluded  Middle  "  and  "  two  contradictories 
with  a  mean  between  them  "  as  both  true,  and  in  the 
same  sentence,  was  far  from  a  happy  idea.  If  the 
two  contradictory  extremes  are  equally  unthinkable, 
yet  include  a  thinkable  mean,  why  insist  upon  the 
acceptance  of  either  extreme?  The  necessity  of  ac- 
cepting one  of  the  contradictories  is  wholly  based 
upon  the  impossibility  of  a  mean.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  a  mean  between  two  contradictions  be,  as  it 
undoubtedly  is,  unthinkable  and  incredible,  what  be- 
comes of  Hamilton's  "  conditioned  "  ?  It  vanishes. 
It  passes  into  the  limbo  of  absurdities.^ 

II.  Dean  Mansel  built  on  the  foundations  laid  by 
Sir  Wm.  Hamilton.  Although  he  rejected  some  of 
the  views  of  the  latter,  as,  for  example,  his  theory  of 
causation,  he  adopted  with  great  zeal  and  thorough 
conviction  his  philosophy  as  a  whole,  and  in  his 
Bampton  Lectures,  preached  at  Oxford  in  1858,  he 
undertook  to  apply  the  principles  of  that  philosophy 
— the  philosophy  of  the  conditioned — to  determine 
the  limits  of  religious  thought,  and  did  so  with  an 
ability  which  secured  for  his  work  great  celebrity. 
His  undoubted  purpose  was  to  serve  the  cause  of 
"natural  and  revealed  religion";  and  it  seemed  to 
him  that  the  most  effective  method  of  overcoming 

'  For  the  views  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton  which  have  been  referred  to 
see  his  Logic,  ii.  61-73;  Metaphysics,  ii.  137-149;  &r\A  Discussions, 
1-38,  and  G02-649.  His  chief  critics  are  mentioned  in  a  subsequent 
note.  For  a  favourable  view  of  his  doctrines  see  Veitch's  Hamil- 
ton in  "  Blackwood's  Philosophical  Classics."  See  also  the  article 
Hamilton  by  Miss  Hamilton  in  Encyc.  Brit. ,  1880. 

621 


AGNOSTICISM  AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

the  objections  urged  against  both  was  to  determine 
as  accurately  as  possible  the  limits  of  religious 
thought.  That  he  undertook  to  do,  and  accordingly 
what  he  aimed  at  in  his  lectures  was  to  supply  a  con- 
clusive answer  to  the  following  question, — "Whether 
the  human  mind  be  capable  of  acquiring  such  a 
knowledge  as  can  warrant  it  to  decide  either  for  or 
against  the  claims  of  any  professed  Revelation,  as 
containing  a  true  or  a  false  representation  of  the 
Divine  Nature  and  Attributes?"  That  question  he 
answered  in  the  negative,  and  thereby  committed 
himself,  at  the  very  outset  of  what  should  have  been 
an  impartial  investigation,  to  advocate  the  cause  of 
a  religious  agnosticism.  He  took  up  a  sceptical  atti- 
tude towards  the  problem,  or  problems,  with  which 
he  had  to  deal,  and  he  did  so  with  a  dogmatic  aim, 
that  of  keeping  human  criticism  out  of  the  sphere 
of  religion  and  of  a  professed  revelation,  and  largely 
under  the  influence  of  a  most  unfortunate  motive, — 
the  fear  of  German  criticism  of  revelation.  Substan- 
tially his  Bampton  Lecture  was  an  exposition  and 
advocacy  of  the  same  sort  of  theological  scepticism 
which  had  been  prevalent  in  the  seventeenth  century. 
I  shall  treat  of  the  teaching  of  Mansel  even  more 
briefly  than  I  have  done  with  what  corresponds  to  it 
in  the  teaching  of  Hamilton.  Indeed,  I  shall  do 
little  more  than  indicate  the  chief  respects  in  which  I 
differ  from  the  doctrine  in  his  first  three  lectures, — 
those  which  present  us  with  what  is  most  distinctive 
and  comprehensive  in  his  argumentation  against  tlio 
knowability  of  God.  To  attempt  a  refutation  of  all 
the  theological  agnosticism  which  he  has  taught  with 

622 


THE   AGNOSTICISM  OF  HANSEL 

a  view  to  defend  special  revelation  and  the  cause  of 
God  would  require  a  book  larger  than  his  own,  and 
would  necessarily  be  a  very  scholastic  and  most  tire- 
some affair.  It  is  necessary,  however,  to  state  what 
one  thinks  to  be  the  fundamental  errors  into  which 
he  fell,  and  why  one  thinks  so. 

1°.  The  comer-stone  of  the  doctrinal  structure 
raised  by  Mansel  is  the  proposition  that  a  knowledge 
of  God  sufficient  to  justify  our  criticising  the  repre- 
sentations of  the  Divine  Nature  and  Attributes  set 
forth  in  any  professed  revelation  can  only  be  attained 
hy  the  construction  of  a  Philosophy  of  the  Infinite 
and  Absolute.  Mansel,  however,  although  he  started 
with  that  proposition,  and  assumed  the  truth  of  it 
throughout  his  whole  course  of  lectures,  made  no 
serious  attempt  to  prove  it.  He  started  from  it  as  if 
it  were  an  axiom.  Yet  it  is  so  far  from  axiomatic 
that  this  counter-proposition  may  be  safely  opposed 
to  it:  Only  the  most  reckless  speculative  thinkers 
will  venture  to  undertake  the  construction  of  a  Phi- 
losophy of  the  Infinite  and  Absolute,  and  God  has  so 
manifested  Himself  in  nature,  mind,  and  history,  in 
the  "  Bibles  "  of  the  nations  and  in  the  spiritual  ex- 
periences of  individuals,  that  men  may  quite  reason- 
ably judge  of  the  claims  of  any  professedly  special 
revelation  set  before  them  for  acceptance.  God  does 
not  ask  from  rational  beings  a  blind  assent  to  what- 
ever professes  to  be  a  special  revelation. 

2°.  According  to  Mansel,  there  are  only  two  con- 
ceivable methods  of  arriving  at  a  philosophical  knowl- 
edge of  God — a  subjective  or  psychological  and  an 
objective  or  metaphysical, — owe  based  on  a  knowledge 

623 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

of  the  mental  faculties  of  men  and  the  other  on  a  sup- 
posed knowledge  of  the  nature  of  God, — and  by 
neither  of  those  methods  can  su£h  a  knowledge  he  at- 
tained. His  so-called  subjective  and  objective  meth- 
ods, however,  are  not  two  distinct  and  contrasted 
methods,  but  simply  inquiries  into  different  yet  cor- 
relative parts  of  a  common  theme;  and  Mansel  him- 
self, although  he  maintained  that  they  do  not  lead 
us  to  a  knowledge  of  the  Infinite  and  the  Absolute, 
could  not  deny  that  they  lead  to  a  real  knowledge  of 
religion.  A  philosophy  of  the  absolute  and  infinite 
is  no  more  the  presupposition  of  one  kind  of  knowl- 
edge than  of  another, — of  a  science  of  religion  than 
of  a  science  of  quantitative  relations,  or  of  physical 
forces,  or  of  organic  forms,  or  of  mental  states.  If 
the  presupposition  of  anything,  it  must  be  the  pre- 
supposition of  everything.  The  want  of  it  can  lead 
to  the  conclusion  that  the  criticism  of  religion  is 
essentially  illegitimate  no  more  reasonably  than  it 
can  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  the  criticism  of  all 
other  things  is  also  illegitimate. 

3°.  Mansel  employed  the  ternis  "  infinite  "  and 
"  absolute  "  in  a  sense  in  which  he  did  not  believe 
them  to  be  true,  and  held  them  to  be  true  in  a  sense 
which  was  incomprehensible  to  him.  That  he  did  so 
may  be  fairly  inferred  from  the  character  of  his  ar- 
gumentation in  various  places.  The  most  explicit 
proof -passage  is  the  note  to  page  36  of  preface  to  the 
fourth  edition  of  his  Bampton  Lectures.  The  coun- 
ter-proposition is  that  he  did  not  show  that  the  terms 
"  infinite  "  and  ''  absolute  "  can  only  denote  absurd 
and  self-contradictory  notions  or  realities  of  which 

624 


THE  AGNOSTICISM  OF  MANSEL 

we  can  have  no  knowledge;  did  not  show  them  to 
be  destitute  of  meanings  both  intelligible  and  self- 
consistent.  They  have  such  meanings,  and  Mansel 
had  no  right  to  assume  that  they  should  be  used 
either  in  an  absurd  sense  or  with  no  sense,  and  for  no 
better  reason  apparently  than  that  he  thought  some 
German  metaphysician  had  so  employed  them. 

4°.  According  to  Mansel,  God  can  only  he  known 
as  First  Cause,  the  Absolute  and  the  Infinite, — conr 
ceptions  which  are  not  reconcilable  tuith  one  another, 
and  inevitably  give  rise  to  inextricable  dilemmas.  In 
order,  however,  to  give  plausibility  to  that  view,  he 
had  to  start  with  arbitrarily  defined  abstractions  of 
his  own  creation,  and  to  reason  from  them  in  a  very 
questionable  way.  The  part  of  his  work  to  which  I 
refer  (pp.  27-44),  is,  indeed,  very  ingenious,  but  the 
insight  displayed  in  it  is  small  in  comparison  with 
the  ingenuity, — and  hence  even  the  ingenuity  is  of  a 
kind  which  one  cannot  altogether  admire — the  scho- 
lastic ingenuity  which  makes  words  seem  to  do  duty 
for  thoughts.  It  is  especially  in  reading  the  second 
lecture  that  one  can  most  easily  understand  why  it  so 
deeply  grieved  and  offended  Mr.  Maurice.  To  a 
man  so  intensely  realistic,  and  so  intensely  anxious 
to  look  at  actual  facts  in  their  true  relations,  as 
Maurice  was,  such  a  logical  evolution  of  abstract 
notions  and  verbal  definitions  as  that  of  Mansel — one 
which  throughout  reminds  us  both  of  the  doctrine 
and  method  of  the  arid  scholasticism  represented  by 
the  Doctor  suhtilis.  Duns  Scotus — naturally  seemed 
not  merely  an  involuntary  self-deception,  but  a 
heartless  and  almost  impious  procedure. 

625 


AGNOSTICISM   AS   TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

5°.  Mansel  maintains  that  the  Absolute  cannot  be 
conceived  of  as  either  conscious  or  unconscious,  sim- 
ple or  complex,  one  or  many,  free  or  necessitated,  in- 
asmuch as  the  Absolute  is  exclusive  of  all  distinctions 
and  determinations.  But  what  he  really  proves  is 
merely  that  his  own  ill-defined  and  so-called  Abso- 
lute is  a  congeries  of  contradictions.  The  true  Abso- 
lute,— God, — can  only  be  self-consistently  thought 
of  as  conscious,  simple,  one,  and  free,  in  the  appro- 
priate sense  of  those  terms.  It  is  not  otherwise  as 
regards  the  Infinite. 

6°.  The  reasoning  of  Mansel  in  his  third  lecture  is 
to  the  effect  that  the  universal  conditions  of  human 
consciousness, — viz.,  1.  Distinction  between  one  ob- 
ject and  another,  2.  Relation  between  subject  and 
object,  3.  Succession  and  duration  in  time,  and  4. 
Personality, — render  it  impossible  that  the  Absolute 
and  Infinite  should  be  objects  of  consciousness.  Were 
it  conclusive,  however,  it  would  be  fatal  to  Mansel's 
own  doctrine,  inasmuch  as  it  would  prove  the  Abso- 
lute and  Infinite  to  be  no  more  objects  of  belief  than 
of  knowledge.  Belief  is  not  less  a  state  of  conscious- 
ness than  knowledge  is,  and  must  as  such  be  impossi- 
ble when  the  other  is  so.  Yet  Mansel  himself  pro- 
fessed to  believe  in  an  Infinite  and  Absolute,  al- 
though he  also  professed  not  to  Icnow  them.  Hence  his 
reasoning,  if  valid  at  all,  manifestly  destroyed  the 
foundation  of  his  own  faith.  Further,  it  can  be  quite 
conclusively  shown  that  he  either  incorrectly  stated 
or  seriously  misapplied  all  the  four  universal  con- 
ditions ascribed  by  him  to  consciousness. 

The  fourth  lecture  gives  a  very  defective  account 
626 


THE  AGNOSTICISM  OF  MANSEL 

of  Schleiermacher's  theory  of  the  nature  of  religion, 
inasmuch  as  it  not  only  leaves  its  merits  unindicated, 
but  quite  erroneously  represents  it  as  contemplating 
God  chiefly  as  "  an  object  of  infinite  magnitude."  It 
also  characterises  what  Schleiermacher  calls  "  the 
feeling  of  absolute  dependence  "  as  "  a  contradiction 
in  terms,"  inasmuch  as  consciousness  is  itself  an  ac- 
tivity, and  as  "  inconsistent  with  the  duty  of  prayer," 
since  prayer  is  essentially  a  state  in  which  man  is  in 
active  relation  towards  God.  Therein,  however,  it 
ignores  a  very  important  truth  in  the  theory,  name- 
ly, that  the  religious  activity  implied  both  in  prayer 
and  practice  is  very  largely  that  of  self-renunciation. 
In  the  two  following  lectures  great  stress  is  laid 
on  the  distinction  between  speculative  and  regulative 
truth  and  on  the  respective  provinces  of  reason  and 
faith.  But  that  portion  of  his  teaching  was,  it  seems 
to  me,  as  justly  as  it  was  strongly  condemned  both 
by  Maurice  and  J.  S.  Mill.  The  assertion  that  "  in 
religion,  in  morals,  in  our  daily  business,  in  the  care 
of  our  lives,  in  the  exercise  of  our  senses,  the  rules 
which  guide  our  practice  cannot  be  reduced  to  prin- 
ciples which  satisfy  our  reason,"  requires  to  be  cor- 
rected and  supplemented  by  the  further  statement 
that  in  all  these  departments  no  rules  not  derived 
from  the  real  nature  of  things  and  founded  on  truth 
satisfactory  to  reason  and  conscience  can  fail  to  mis- 
lead and  corrupt  practice.  "  Truth  "  is  affirmed  to 
be  "  nothing  more  than  a  relation,"  although  there 
can  be  no  relations  without  realities;  and  "  truth  and 
falsehood  "  are  described  as  "  properties  of  concep- 

627 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

tions  and  not  of  things,  but  relations  of  intelligences 
and  their  conceptions  to  the  natures  of  things." 

The  seventh  lecture  is  pervaded  by  moral  scepti- 
cism. It  is  the  lecture  in  which  Mansel  represents 
the  notion  of  an  absolute  morality — i.e.,  of  a  moral 
law  binding  on  all  intelligences — as  a  mere  fiction; 
charges  Kant  and  those  who  believe  in  such  a  moral- 
ity with  making  their  own  morality  the  measure  of 
absolute  morality,  although  their  aim  was  just  the 
reverse — namely,  to  find  a  morality  higher,  truer, 
and  more  stable  and  permanent  than  their  own ;  and 
represents  human  and  divine  morality  as  so  entirely 
different  as  to  involve  a  denial  of  likeness  between 
God  and  man,  render  moral  communion  between 
them  impossible,  and  deprive  of  all  meaning  or  value 
any  ascriptions  of  righteousness,  sanctity,  love,  and 
mercy  to  the  Almighty.  It  was  with  such  views  that 
he  fancied  the  difficulties  attached  to  such  doctrines 
as  the  Atonement,  Predestination,  Original  Sin, 
Eternal  Punishment,  &c.,  could  be  removed.  The 
text  of  the  lecture  was  a  strangely  inappropriate  one, 
— Ezekiel  xviii.  25:  "Yet  ye  say,  The  way  of  the 
Lord  is  not  equal.  Hear  now,  O  house  of  Israel;  Is 
not  my  way  equal  ?  Are  not  your  ways  unequal  ?  " 
Were  the  teaching  given  in  the  lecture  true,  what 
could  the  questions  in  the  text  mean?  or,  how  could 
there  be  any  reasoning  between  the  Lord  and  Israel  ? 

The  last  of  Mansel's  lectures  drew  attention  to  it- 
self chiefly  by  the  strange  doctrine  that  the  Almighty 
might  suspend  not  only  physical  but  ethical  laws, 
and  that  such  suspensions  might  reasonably  be  re- 
garded as  moral  miracles.     No  portion  of  his  teach- 

628 


THE   AGNOSTICISM   OF    SPENCER 

ing,  perhaps,  gave  so  much  offence.  The  chief  thesis, 
however,  maintained  in  the  lecture  was  that  Chris- 
tianity as  a  revelation  must  be  accepted  chiefly  on 
the  ground  of  external  evidence,  and  wholly  or  not  at 
all,  or,  in  other  words,  in  such  a  way  as  will  get  rid 
in  a  large  measure  of  the  criticism  of  human  reason. 
To  get  that  thesis  accepted  was  the  chief  aim  of  his 
Bampton  Lectures,  and  their  chief  defect.  Happily 
for  the  cause  of  Christian  truth  and  of  spiritual  prog- 
ress it  is  a  thesis  which  the  human  mind,  fortunately 
for  itself,  never  will  establish  or  accept.  It  would  be 
death  to  itself  and  death  to  religion  if  it  did.  Any 
so-called  revelation  or  religion  which  must  be  ac- 
cepted without  criticism  is  one  which  cannot  supply 
the  wants  of  the  human  spirit.^ 

III.  Mr.  Herbert  Spencer,  whose  agnosticism  has 
already  been  referred  to  (see  pp.  55-59),  has  attained 
a  unique  position  in  England  as  a  philosopher,  and 
a  well-deserved  world-wide  reputation.  No  one, 
perhaps,  has  done  more  not  merely  to  popularise  the 
development  theory  but  to  advance  and  extend  it  in 
all  directions  both  by  his  own  exertions  and  by  his 
influence  on  others.  Hence  his  services  have  been 
of  inestimable  value  alike  to  philosophy  and  theol- 

'  Mangel's  agnosticism  is  expounded  in  his  Bampton  Lectures, 
4tli  ed..  1859,  his  Metaphysics  (Encyc.  Brit.,  8th  ed.),  and  Philos- 
ophy of  the  Conditioned^  18(i6.  Among  his  critics  have  been  J.  S. 
Mill  in  Examination  of  Sir  W.  Hamilton's  Philosophy.,  ch.  vii. ; 
Maurice,  What  is  Revelation?  Martineau's  Kssays  Philosophical 
and  Theological,  1885 ;  Professor  Davidson,  Theism  and  Human 
Nature,  140-159;  Pfleiderer,  Development  of  Theology,  327-329; 
Caldecott,  Philosophy  of  Religion,  405-410.  There  is  an  admirable 
refutation  of  Mansel's  arguments  for  "  the  doctrine  that  all  our 
attempts  to  form  to  ourselves  tlie  idea  of  God  involve  us  in  contra- 
diction" in  the  Natural  Theology  of  Father  Boedder,  S.J.,  pp. 
214-232. 

629 


AGNOSTICISM   AS   TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

ogy.  Forty  years  ago  the  fear  that  philosophy,  and 
especially  theology,  would  be  ruined  by  the  doctrine 
of  evolution  was  widely  prevalent.  All  fear  of  the 
kind  has  now  almost  vanished^  and  there  are  few 
educated  and  intelligent  persons  who  do  not  recog- 
nise that  what  was  then  regarded  as  a  terrible  danger 
to  religion  and  theology  is,  and  must  be,  of  incal- 
culable value  to  both.  It  has  come  to  be  clearly  seen 
by  the  vast  majority  of  thoughtful  men  that  the 
evolution  of  the  universe  through  countless  ages,  in 
accordance  with  regular  and  beneficial  laws,  is  neces- 
sarily a  far  richer  and  more  instructive  self-manifes- 
tation of  the  Divine  than  any  mere  act  of  instantane- 
ous creation  could  be,  and  that  material  and  mental 
nature  alike  must  at  any  given  moment  or  stage  have 
immensely  less  of  either  physical  or  spiritual,  natural 
or  supernatural,  truth  in  them  to  reveal  than  there 
is  in  their  development  and  history. 

Mr.  Spencer  inevitably  promoted  the  cause  of  ag- 
nosticism in  Britain  owing  to  his  being  its  most  illus- 
trious adherent.  He  could  not  fail  to  reflect  some 
of  the  light  and  lustre  of  his  own  genius  on  the  doc- 
trine he  taught.  To  agree  with  Mr.  Spencer  on  such 
abstruse  themes  as  the  absolute,  the  infinite,  and  the 
unknowable  may  well  have  seemed  to  many  persons 
evidence  of  their  own  intellectual  superiority  to  ordi- 
nary mankind.  Otherwise,  however,  than  in  such  a 
general  way  he  does  not  seem  to  have  done  much  for 
agnosticism.  His  agnosticism,  as  he  has  always  can- 
didly stated,  was  almost  entirely  derived  from  the 
teaching  of  Hamilton  and  Mansel.  It  is  not  at  all 
in  the  elaboration  and  exposition  of  it — not  in  "  Part 

630 


THE   AGNOSTICISM   OF   SPENCEK 

I.  The  Unknowable,"  of  his  First  Principles — that 
one  can  see  his  real  merits  and  unquestionable  men- 
tal power.  There  he  is  only  to  be  seen  uncritically 
accepting  the  errors  taught  by  Hamilton  and  Mansel, 
and  employing  the  same  metaphysical  abstractions 
and  equivocal  terms  and  formulsB  in  the  same  worse 
than  unprofitable  way.  The  arguments  of  Mansel 
in  his  Bampton  Lectures  (II.  and' III.),  so  obviously 
depended  on  such  erroneous  definitions  and  abstrac- 
tions as  The  Infinite,  The  Absolute,  and  The  Uncon- 
ditioned— mere  absurdities  unthinkable  by  any  hu- 
man intellect  if  dissociated  from  Space,  Time,  and 
Deity,  and  pretended  to  be  in  themselves  entities — 
and  on  ratiocination  of  the  worst  scholastic  kind,  that 
one  cannot  fail  to  wonder  how  Mr.  Spencer  should 
have  been  deluded  by  such  medieval  jugglery.  He 
was  almost  the  only,  if  not  the  only,  British  or  Amer- 
ican philosopher  of  repute  who  was  deceived  by  it. 
Nor  was  it  much  if  any  otherwise  as  regards  Euro- 
pean philosophical  opinion  anywhere.  Even  the 
French,  German,  and  Italian  philosophers  who  were 
most  appreciative  of  Mr.  Spencer's  treatment  of  the 
knowable  had  little  good  to  say  of  his  views  on  the 
unknowable.  M.  Renouvier,  perhaps  the  most  emi- 
nent living  philosophical  criticist  in  Europe,  was 
among  the  first  and  most  destructive  assailants  of 
the  agnostic  section  of  Mr,  Spencer's  philosophy.^ 
So  far  as  regards  what  is  taught  in  that  section  it 
seems  to  have  been  quite  conclusively  shown  that 
it  is  erroneous. 

'  My  reference  is  to  the  articles  headed  "  Examen  des  Premiers 
principes  de  Herbert  Spencer,"  and  published  in  the  Critique  Phi- 
losophique  during  the  years  1885  and  1886, 

631 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

It  does  not  follow,  however,  that  Mr.  Spencer's 
positive  or  synthetic  philosophy  has  been  thereby 
destroyed  or  fatally  injured.  Even  in  it,  of  course, 
many  defects  have  been  found,  and  more  may  still 
be  foimd,  but  all  that  can  be  said  to  have  been  evi- 
dently and  irretrievably  confuted  is  what  can  be  no 
great  loss.  The  unknowable  must  be  wholly  un- 
known, and  cannot  affect  us  in  the  least  either  for 
good  or  evil.  The  mysterious  will  always  remain 
with  us  to  stimulate  us  to  seek  knowledge  and  to 
cultivate  reverence. 

Mr.  Spencer  identifies  God  with  the  Absolute,  and 
on  that  ground  pronounces  God  to  be  unknowable. 
His  reason  for  doing  so  is  the  relativity  of  knowl- 
edge. But  the  relativity  of  knowledge  rationally 
understood,  we  have  already  seen,  is  no  reason  what- 
ever for  regarding  either  God,  the  World,  or  Self 
as  unknowable.  Were  there  any  truth  in  the  as- 
sumption that  the  relativity  of  knowledge  excludes 
us  from  knowledge  of  any  of  the  ultimates  of  knowl- 
edge, it  would  in  self-consistency  exclude  us  from 
knowledge  of  them  all;  that  is  to  say,  it  would  in- 
volve us  in  universal  scepticism, — in  ignorance  of 
God  indeed  but  also  of  self  and  the  universe. 

Mr.  Spencer  divides  and  distributes  all  reality  into 
the  knowable  and  unknowable.  The  knowable  is 
affirmed  to  contain  all  that  is  phenomenal,  and  the 
unknowable  all  that  is  noumenal.  The  phenomenal 
and  noumenal,  the  relative  and  absolute,  the  condi- 
tioned and  unconditioned,  are  thus  severed  from  each 
other  and  contrasted  by  him  in  the  sharpest  way. 
That  is,  however,  necessarily  an  arbitrary  and  dog- 

632 


THE   AGNOSTICISM   OF   SPENCER 

matic  way,  and  one  for  which  Mr.  Spencer  has  ad- 
duced neither  epistemological  nor  psychological  rea- 
sons. His  decision  is  merely  a  sic  volo,  sic  jubeo;  and 
that  is  obviously  not  enough.  No  proof  is  given 
that  there  is  any  sharp  distinction,  or  indeed  any 
distinction  of  an  objective  kind,  between  science  and 
nescience,  so-called  phenomena  and  noumena,  &c. 
Nor  is  it  in  the  least  likely  that  there  is  any  such 
hard-and-fast  distinction. 

The  true  Absolute  is  not  exclusive  but  comprehen- 
sive of  all  real  and  self -consistent  relationships.  To 
an  infinite  intellect  there  can  be  no  nescience.  There 
may  be  innumerable  intelligences,  the  limits  of  whose 
knowledge  as  far  transcend  those  of  man  as  the 
limits  of  human  intelligence  transcend  those  of  a 
mollusc  or  an  insect.  Science  is  not  a  self-contained 
whole  on  all  sides  closely  shut  in  by  what  man  is 
pleased  to  call  the  Absolute  or  Unconditioned,  under 
the  illusion  that  what  he  does  not  know  cannot  be 
known.  Practically,  so  far  as  man  is  concerned, 
science  has  no  limits  except  self-consistency  of 
thought  and  the  measure  of  intellect  allotted  to  him. 
We  can  distinguish  vague  from  exact  knowledge,  but 
we  cannot  reasonably  say  thus  far  all  is  science  or 
knowable  but  beyond  all  is  nescience  or  unknowable. 

Mr,  Spencer  has,  of  course,  refrained  from  ex- 
pressly declaring  "  The  Unknowable  "  to  be  known 
to  himself  or  others,  but  he  comes  very  near  indeed 
to  doing  so  when  he  assures  us  that  man  has  a  con- 
sciousness of  the  unknowable,  and  that  all  that  is 
knowable  depends  on  and  is  the  manifestation  of  the 
unknowable.     In  like  manner,  he  declares  "  The  Ab- 

633 


AGNOSTICISM   AS   TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

solute  "  to  be  not  only  unknown  hut  also  unknowable, 
yet  expressly  and  confidently  affirms  it  to  be  "  the 
fundamental  reality  which  underlies  all  that  ap- 
pears," and  "  the  omnipresent  Causal  Energy  or 
Power  of  which  all  phenomena,  physical  and  mental, 
are  the  manifestations."  He  even  expressly  informs 
us — and  we  are,  of  course,  glad  to  receive  the  infor- 
mation— that  this  "  Power  must  be  conceived  as  cer- 
tainly not  lower  than  personal  " ;  that  "  though  the 
Absolute  cannot  in  any  manner  or  degree  be  known, 
in  the  strict  sense  of  knowing,  yet  we  find  that  its 
positive  existence  is  a  necessary  datum  of  conscious- 
ness; that  so  long  as  consciousness  continues,  we  can- 
not for  an  instant  rid  it  of  this  datum ;  and  that  thus 
the  belief  which  this  datum  constitutes,  has  a  higher 
warrant  than  any  other  whatever."  Such  statements, 
and  those  akin  to  them,  must  prevent  all  honest 
critics  of  Mr.  Herbert's  doctrine  of  the  unknowable 
not  only  from  classing  him,  as  some  persons  have 
done,  among  atheists,  but  from  failing  to  recognise 
in  him  a  natural  piety,  a  religious  reverence,  which 
is  quite  conspicuous  in  his  work. 

The  self-contradictoriness  of  his  views  of  the  Ab- 
solute, however,  is  of  a  kind  too  obvious  to  have 
escaped  general  observation.  To  assure  us  that  it 
"  manifests  itself,"  "  certainly  exists,"  "  cannot  fail 
to  be  believed,"  "  is  consciously  felt  as  existent  in  all 
orders  of  phenomena,  in  space  and  time,  in  subject 
and  object,  in  spirit  and  matter,"  and  "  in  recognition 
of  which  alone  can  religion  and  science  be  recon- 
ciled," and  yet  that  it  is  not  only  entirely  unknown 
but  wholly  unknowable  to  himself  and  all  mankind, 

634 


THE   AGNOSTICISM    OF    SPENCER 

is  surely  as  strange  a  paradox  as  has  ever  appeared 
in  the  history  of  philosophy.  Yet  that  is  just  what 
Mr.  Spencer  has  done.  In  one  breath  he  assures  us 
that  the  Power  which  the  universe  manifests  to  us 
is  utterly  inscrutable,  and  in  the  next  that  the  inevi- 
tably felt  existence  of  that  unknowable  Power  is  the 
one  ineradicable  and  absolute  certitude  common  to 
faith  and  reason,  religion  and  science.  The  two  as- 
sertions, however,  are  not  shown  to  be  reconcilable, 
although  Mr.  Spencer  was  obviously  bound  to  do  so 
before  combining  them  in  a  doctrine  which  was  to  be 
the  corner-stone  of  a  vast  philosophical  structure. 
That  he  has  not  done ;  nor,  I  believe,  can  it  be  done. 
No  power  that  "  manifests  itself  "  can  be  properly 
said  to  be  "  entirely  inscrutable  "  or  "  entirely  un- 
knowable." All  felt  consciousness  of  certainty  pre- 
supposes some  apprehension  of  reality.  Conscious- 
ness without  some  measure  of  cognition  is  no  more 
conceivable  than  consciousness  without  feeling  or 
volition.  To  warrant  any  one  to  assert,  as  Mr.  Spen- 
cer does,  that  there  is  an  absolute  and  unconditional, 
an  eternal  and  omnipresent  Power  or  Force,  which  is 
self-manifested  to  us  although  it  is  utterly  inscrut- 
able, he  ought  himself,  in  self-consistency,  to  know 
that  Power  or  Force,  and  know  it  to  be  all  that  he 
affirms  it  to  be,  inscrutability  included.  But  what 
a  complication  of  contradictions  and  self-contradic- 
tions there  is  in  such  a  conception, — self-evidently 
and  unquestionably  in  it, — yet  which  Mr.  Spencer 
has  never  even  attempted  to  disentangle  and  har- 
monise ! 

He  arbitrarily  ascribes  certain  attributes  to  the 
635 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

Absolute  and  as  arbitrarily  denies  to  it  others. 
There  is  no  more  apparent  reason  for  assigning  to  it 
metaphysical  and  dynamical  attributes  than  intel- 
lectual and  ethical  attributes.  The  latter  are  of  a 
higher  character  than  the  former.  Mere  force, — 
force  apart  from  thought,  righteousness,  and  love — 
apart  from  law,  order,  and  purpose, — can  only  be  a 
worthless,  wasteful,  dangerous  thing,  and  certainly 
not  a  basis  for  the  reconciliation  of  science  and  re- 
ligion. If  it  be  a  Power,  why  should  it  not  be  an 
Intelligence  and  a  Moral  Personality?  If  it  underlies 
and  is  implied  in  the  very  possibility  of  both  science 
and  religion,  and  of  their  possible  reconciliation  in 
the  philosophy  either  of  Mr.  Spencer  or  of  any  other 
man  of  genius,  why  should  he  not  ascribe  to  it  omni- 
science and  wisdom,  righteousness  and  love,  on  the 
ground  of  the  evidences  of  those  attributes  in  nature, 
mind,  history,  and  especially  religious  history,  in- 
stead of  merely  eternity,  omnipresence,  inscrutabil- 
ity, and  indefinite  energy? 

The  attributes  which  he  actually  ascribes  to  the 
Absolute  are  just  those  with  which  the  greatest  diffi- 
culties are  connected.  Infinity  and  eternity  are  over- 
whelming thoughts.  Positive  evidence  regarding 
them  is  not  to  be  had.  Strain  our  minds  as  we  may 
in  efforts  to  comprehend  them,  we  can  only  attain 
very  dim  and  limited  apprehensions  of  them.  A 
rising  and  vigorous  school  of  theologians  and  philos- 
ophers,— the  criticist  school, — recommend  us  to 
cease  affirmation  of  them  and  confine  ourselves  to 
think  of  Deity  from  an  exclusively  anthropological 
standpoint.    All  the  knowledge  of  the  transcendental 

636 


THE   AGNOSTICISM   OF   SPENCER 

attributes  which  we  can  reasonably  claim  to  have 
depends  merely  on  the  self -consistency  of  thought; 
but  human  thought,  especially  in  the  regions  of  meta- 
physics and  metempirics,  is  exceedingly  apt  to  be 
very  inconsistent.  The  evidences  for  assigning  mind 
to  the  Absolute  are  quite  as  valid  as  those  for  assign- 
ing to  it  power.  Mr.  Spencer  has,  I  think,  gone  so 
far  that  he  ought  to  go  much  farther. 

His  view  of  the  Absolute  as  power  or  force  seems 
to  me,  as  it  has  seemed  to  many  others,  quite  as 
mysterious  as  any  theological  dogma.  It  appears 
irreconcilable  with  his  positivist  theory  of  knowledge 
or  science.  That  seems  directly  to  exclude,  if  ac- 
cepted, all  transcendence  of  the  phenomena  either 
of  matter  or  mind.  Yet  Mr.  Spencer  expressly  as- 
sumes and  postulates  that  the  Absolute  as  force  does 
transcend  them.  It  is  not  the  force  of  either  matter 
or  spirit.  Mr.  Spencer  disclaims  being  either  a  ma- 
terialist or  spiritualist.  The  "  force  "  which  seems 
to  be  the  most  distinctive  idea  in  his  doctrine  is  repre- 
sented as  belonging  to  neither  matter  nor  mind,  but 
as  underlying  both  and  independent  of  both, — a 
force  which,  if  it  act  at  all,  acts  a  tergo,  and  of  itself, 
from  beyond  all  that  the  human  mind  can  know  or 
even  in  any  way  conceive.  Physicists  have  com- 
plained that  Mr.  Spencer  has  often  made  use  of  the 
term  "  force  "  in  a  variety  of  senses  without  indicat- 
ing the  special  sense  in  which  it  was  or  should  be 
employed — e.g.,  whether  as  denoting  kinetic  energy, 
or  potential  energy,  or  as  cause  of  change  of  motion, 
or  as  a  biological  process,  or  as  a  general  term  for 
sense  impressions.^  Whether  that  be  so  or  not,  how- 
>  Karl  Pearson,  Grammar  of  Science^  p.  389. 
637 


AGNOSTICISM   AS   TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

ever,  is  mainly  a  question  for  physicists.  But  far  the 
most  famous  sense  in  which  he  employs  it  is  none  of 
those,  but  that  in  which  he  identifies  "  force  "  with 
the  entirety  of  noumenal  being,  or  with  the  Absolute, 
severing  it  thoroughly  from  and  contrasting  it  with 
the  phenomenal,  and  relegating  it  to  an  unknown 
and  unknowable  sphere  beyond  both  matter  and 
spirit — to  what  one  may  call  "  the  back  of  beyond." 
Force  in  that  sense  is  assuredly  not  knowable  or 
even,  properly  speaking,  conceivable.  It  is  a  mere 
idol  of  the  brain, — one,  however,  which  is  not  likely 
to  be  widely  worshipped.  A  more  wretched  substi- 
tute for  Deity  there  could  not  be.  It  is  force  which 
may  be  said  to  do  everything,  but  which  cannot  even 
he  thought  of  as  doing  anything.  The  late  Professor 
Tait  enjoyed  saying  that  the  only  recorded  instance 
of  its  action  was  the  famous  Baron  Munchausen's 
journey  to  the  moon.  On  that  occasion  the  adven- 
turous gentleman  is  reported  to  have  pulled  himself 
up  by  his  boots.  In  no  respect  can  an  absolutely 
unknowable  force  be  identified  with  or  likened  to 
known  forces  or  specific  energies. 

According  to  Mr.  Spencer  religion  has  always  had 
for  its  object  the  Unknowable  and  science  the  Know- 
able.  Hence  he  represents  the  former  as  having 
always  been  throwing  off  imaginary  knowledge  until 
there  is  no  knowledge  to  get  rid  of,  whereas  the 
latter  has  always  been  freeing  itself  from  the  imag- 
inary and  conjectural,  and  extending  its  acquaint- 
ance with  the  phenomenal  and  empirical.  The  facts, 
however,  if  adequately  and  impartially  studied,  con- 
tradict   instead    of    supporting    the    generalisation. 

638 


THE   AGNOSTICISM   OF    SPENCEK 

What  history  really  and  amply  shows  is  that  both 
science  and  religion  have  advanced  in  the  same  way. 
Both  have,  slowly  perhaps,  but  on  the  whole  surely, 
learned  to  correct  their  errors  and  grown  richer  in 
the  knowledge  appropriate  to  them.  Neither  the  one 
nor  the  other  has  either  begun  or  ended  with  the 
assumption  that  the  Power  or  Force  which  the  uni- 
verse manifests  is  utterly  unknowable.  Knowledge 
and  faith,  religion  and  science,  are  not  hostile  but 
closely  akin  to  each  other,  coming  as  they  do  from 
the  same  divine  source,  being  fed  with  the  divine  sus- 
tenance, and  tending  to  the  same  divine  ends.  Mr. 
Spencer's  "  Unknowable  "  is  a  poor  substitute  for 
the  true  Absolute.  Hildebert,  a  pious  and  gifted 
archbishop  of  Tours  in  the  eleventh  century,  gave  a 
far  more  credible  and  worthy  expression  to  the  con- 
ception when  he  spake  of  God  thus: — 

"  Above  all  things,  below  all  things  ; 
Around  all  things,  within  all  things  ; 
Within  all,  but  not  shut  in  ; 
Around  all,  but  not  shut  out ; 
Above  all,  as  the  Ruler  ; 
Below  all,  as  the  Sustainer  ; 
Around  all,  as  all-embracing  Protection  ; 
Within  all,  as  the  Fulness  of  Life."  ' 


'  The  literature  relating  to  Spencer's  primary  philosophy  is  amply 
given  in  Ueberweg's  Grundriss,  Dr.  Theil,  406,  407.  Therefore 
I  shall  only  mention  Grosse's  Herbert  Spencer's  Lehre  v.  dem 
Unerkennbaren,  1890,  Gaup's  Erkentnisslehre  Herbert  Spencer, 
1890,  Orr's  Christian  View  of  God  and  the  World,  pp.  97-112,  Up- 
ton's Hibbert  Lectures,  pp.  97-124.  and  Dr.  "Ward's  Naturalism  aiid 
Agnosticism, — the  heaviest  assault  which  has  yet  been  made  on  the 
foundations  of  Mr.  Spencer's  philosophy.  See  also  Theism,  pp. 
288-301. 


639 


AGNOSTICISM  AS   TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 


V.     PRESENT     WORK     PAKT     OF     A     SYSTEM     OF     NAT- 
URAL    THEOLOGY 

The  present  volume  is  part  of  what  was  many 
years  ago  announced  as  meant  to  form  when  com- 
pleted a  System  of  Natural  Theology  which  would 
deal  with  four  great  problems : — 

1°.  To  exhibit  what  evidence  there  is  for  belief 
in  the  existence  of  God; 

2°.  To  refute  anti-theistic  theories, — atheism, 
materialism,  positivism,  secularism,  pes- 
simism, pantheism,  and  agnosticism; 

3°.  To  delineate  the  character  of  God  as  dis- 
closed by  nature,  mind,  and  history,  and  to 
show  what  light  the  truth  thus  ascertained 
casts  upon  man's  duty  and  destiny;  and, 

4°.  To  trace  the  rise  and  development  of  the 
idea  of  God  and  the  history  of  theistic 
speculation. 

The  first  theme  was  dealt  with  in  Theism;  and  the 
second  in  Anti-Theistic  Theories, — agnosticism  ex- 
cepted, which  is  the  subject  of  the  present  volume. 
The  other  two  tasks  indicated  have  not  been  treated 
of  except  at  certain  points  where  doing  so  could  not 
well  be  avoided.  In  my  article  on  Theism,  however, 
in  the  ninth  edition  of  the  Encyclopcodia  Britannica 
I  have  so  far  referred  to  what  remains  to  be  done, 
and  the  following  extract  from  that  article,  miUatis 
mutandis,  may,  I  hope,  prove  useful  to  readers  of 
any  of  the   three  volumes, — Theism,  Anti-Theistic 

640 


A  SYSTEM  OF  NATURAL  THEOLOGY 

Theories,  and  Agnosticism, — as  well  as  suggest  to 
reviewers  that  criticisms  based  merely  on  omissions 
must  necessarily  be  premature. 

The  agnosticism  originated  by  Kant  has  been  one 
of  the  distinctive  and  prominent  phenomena  in  the 
history  of  religion  and  theism  during  the  nineteenth 
century.  It  sprang  out  of  an  earlier  agnosticism. 
Hume  and  his  predecessors  admitted  that  the  con- 
ditions of  thought — otherwise,  the  categories  of 
experience  or  ideas  of  reason — were  in  appearance 
necessary  and  objectively  valid,  but  in  reality  only 
arbitrary  and  subjective,  their  seeming  necessity  and 
objectivity  being  illusory,  and  consequent  on  mere 
repetitions  and  accidental  associations  of  sensations 
and  feelings.  Kant  showed  that  they  were  not  only 
seemingly  but  really  necessary  to  thought,  and  irre- 
solvable into  the  particular  in  experience.  He  denied, 
however,  that  we  are  entitled  to  consider  them  as  of 
more  than  subjective  applicability, — that  what  we 
necessarily  think  must  necessarily  be,  or  be  as  we 
think  it.  He  affirmed  all  knowledge  to  be  confined  to 
experience,  the  phenomenal,  the  conditioned.  It  was 
quite  in  accordance  with  this  view  of  the  limits  of 
knowledge  that  he  should  have  denied  that  we  can 
know  God,  even  while  he  affirmed  that  we  cannot  but 
think  of  God.  It  was  by  no  means  in  obvious  har- 
mony with  it  that  he  should  have  affirmed  that  we 
must,  on  moral  grounds,  retain  a  certain  belief  in 
God.  Sir  W.  Hamilton  and  Dean  Mansel  followed 
Kant  in  holding  that  we  can  have  no  knowledge  of 
God  in  Himself,  as  knowledge  is  only  of  the  relative 

G41 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE    OF    GOD 

and  phenomenal.  They  strove  to  show  that  the 
notions  of  the  unconditioned,  the  infinite,  the  abso- 
hite,  are  mere  negations  of  thought,  which  destroy 
themselves  by  their  mutual  contradictions  and  by 
the  absurdities  which  they  involve.  Yet  both  of 
these  philosophers  held  that  there  is  a  revelation  of 
God  in  Scripture  and  conscience,  and  that  we  are 
bound  to  believe  it,  not  indeed  as  teaching  us  what 
God  really  is,  but  what  He  wishes  us  to  believe  con- 
cerning Him.  Herbert  Spencer,  adopting  Kant's 
theory  of  the  limits  of  knowledge,  and  regarding  as 
decisive  Hamilton  and  Mansel's  polemic  against  the 
philosophies  of  the  Absolute,  has  concluded  that  the 
only  truth  underlying  professed  revelations,  positive 
religions,  and  so-called  theological  science  is  the  ex- 
istence of  an  unknowable  and  unthinkable  cause  of 
all  things.  In  the  view  of  the  Positivist  the  unknow- 
able itself  is  a  metaphysical  fiction.  The  Kantian 
doctrine  has  had  a  still  more  extensive  influence  in 
Germany  than  in  Britain,  and  German  philosophers 
and  theologians  have  displayed  great  ingenuity  in 
their  endeavours  to  combine  with  it  some  sort  of 
recognition  of  God  and  of  religion.  Fries,  De  Wette, 
and  others  have  relegated  religion  to  the  sphere  of 
faith,  Schleiermacher  and  his  followers  to  that  of 
feeling,  Ritschl  and  his  school  to  that  of  ethical 
wants,  F.  A.  Lange  to  that  of  imagination,  &c.  Their 
common  aim  has  been  to  find  for  piety  towards  God  a 
special  place  which  they  can  fence  off  from  the  rest 
of  human  nature,  so  as  to  be  able  to  claim  for  re- 
ligion independence  of  reason,  speculation,  and  sci- 
ence, a  right  to  existence  even  although  necessarily 

642 


A  SYSTEM  OF  NATURAL  THEOLOGY 

iguorant  of  the  object  of  its  faith,  feeling,  moral 
sense,  or  phantasy.^ 

The  movement  indicated  has  led  to  no  direct  con- 
clusion which  has  obtained,  or  is  likely  to  obtain, 
general  assent.  It  has  had,  however,  a  very  impor- 
tant indirect  result.  It  has  shown  how  interested  in, 
and  dependent  on,  a  true  criticism  or  science  of  cog- 
nition are  theism  and  theology.  It  has  made  increas- 
ingly manifest  the  immense  significance  to  religion 
of  the  problem  as  to  the  powers  and  limits  of  thought 
which  Kant  stated  and  discussed  with  so  much 
vigour  and  originality.  Hence  research  into  what 
the  Germans  call  "  die  erkenntnisstheoretische 
Grundsatze  " — the  philosophical  bases — of  theism 
has  been  greatly  stimulated  and  advanced  by  the 
movement.  This  is  an  enormous  gain,  which  more 
than  compensates  for  sundry  incidental  losses. 
Kant's  solution  of  the  problem  which  he  placed 
in  the  foreground  of  philosophy  has  not  been  found 

*  Among  works  in  which  it  is  denied  that  the  real  nature  of  God 
can  be  known  are — Kant's  Kr.  d.  r.  V.  ;  Fichte's  Kr.  alter  Offen- 
harung ;  Schleiermacher's  Reden,  Dielektik^  and  Glaubenslehre ; 
Trendelenburg's  Log.  Untersuchungen,  ii.  §§  xx.-xxiv.  ;  Hamilton's 
Led.  on  Met.,  and  Discussions ;  Mansel's  Bampton  Led.,  and  Phi- 
losophy of  the  Conditioned ;  H.  Spencer's  First  Pnnciples ;  and 
the  writings  of  Lange,  Ilitschl,  and  other  Neo-Kautists.  Among 
works  in  which  the  real  cognoscibility  of  God  is  affirmed  are — Cal- 
derwood's  Ph.  of  the  Infinite;  C.  Hodge's  Sys.  Th.,  i. ;  M'Cosh's 
Int.  of  the  Mind,  Phil.  Series,  &c.  ;  H.  B.  Smith's  Intr.  to  Ch.  Th.^ 
and  Faith  and  Philosophy;  Maurice's  What  is  Revelation  f 
Young's  Province  of  Reason  ;  and  Harris's  Phil.  Bases  of  Theism. 
See  also  L.  Robert,  De  la  Certitude,  &c.,  1880;  Olle-Laprune,  De 
la  Certitude  Morale,  1880;  G.  Derepas,  Les  Theories  de  I'lncon- 
naissahle,  1883;  G.  Matheson,  in  Can  the  Old  Faith  Live  with  the 
New'  1885;  R  T.  Smith,  Man^s  Knowledge  of  Man  and  of  God, 
1886;  Schramm,  Die  Erkennharkeit  Gottes,  1876;  Bertling,  Die 
Erkennharkeit  Gottes,  1885  ;  Grung,  Das  Problem  der  Gewissheit, 
1886;  Milhaud,  Certitude  logique,  2nd  ed.,  1898;  and,  of  course, 
Newman's  Grammar  of  Assent,  1870. 

643 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE    OF    GOD 

to  be  one  in  which  the  mind  can  rest.  From  his 
agnosticism  down  to  the  very  empiricism  which  it  was 
his  aim  to  refute  descent  is  logically  inevitable.  The 
agnosticism  of  piety  has  in  no  form  been  able  to 
discover  a  halting-place, — a  spot  on  which  to  raise 
theism  or  any  solid  religious  construction.  In  no 
form  has  it  been  able  to  prove  its  legitimacy,  to  main- 
tain its  self-consistency,  or  to  defend  itself  success- 
fully against  the  agnosticism  of  unbelief.  It  is, 
therefore,  not  surprising  that  it  should  have  been 
very  generally  regarded  as  dangerous  to  theism  in 
reality,  even  when  friendly  to  it  in  intention.  Yet 
there  is  much  in  the  theory  of  cognition  on  which  it 
proceeds  wdiich  the  tlieist  can  utilise.  Indeed,  no 
theory  of  cognition  can  afford  a  satisfactory  basis  to 
theism  which  does  not  largely  adopt  and  assimilate 
that  of  Kant.  He  has  conclusively  shown  that  all 
our  knowledge  is  a  synthesis  of  contingent  impres- 
sions and  necessary  conditions;  that  without  the  lat- 
ter there  can  be  neither  sense,  understanding,  nor 
reason;  that  they  constitute  intelligence,  and  are  the 
light  of  mind;  that  they  also  pervade  the  whole  world 
of  experience  and  illuminate  it;  that  there  is  neither 
thing  nor  thought  in  the  universe  which  does  not 
exhibit  them  in  some  of  their  aspects;  that  apart 
from  them  there  can  be  no  reality,  no  truth,  no  sci- 
ence. The  agnostic  corollaries  appended  to  this  the- 
ory by  Kant  and  others,  instead  of  being  necessary 
consequences  from  it,  are  inconsistent  with  it. 

Kant  and  the  agnostics  say  that  we  know  only  the 
conditioned;  but  what  they  prove  is  that  we  know 
also  the  conditions  of  thought,  and  that  these  condi- 

644 


A  SYSTEM  OF  NATURAL  THEOLOGY 

tions  are  themselves  unconditioned,  otherwise  they 
would  not  be  necessary.  They  affirm  that  we  can 
know  only  the  phenomenal  and  relative;  but  what 
they  establish  is  that  it  is  as  impossible  to  know  only 
the  relative  and  phenomenal  as  to  know  only  the 
absolute  and  noumenal,  and  that  in  so  far  as  we  know 
at  all  we  know  through  ideas  which  are  absolute  and 
noumenal  in  the  only  intelligible,  and  in  a  very  real 
and  important  sense.  They  maintain,  what  is  very 
true,  if  not  a  truism,  that  the  categories  are  only 
valid  for  experience,  and  they  imply  that  this  is  be- 
cause experience  limits  and  defines  the  categories, 
whereas,  according  to  their  own  theory,  it  is  the  cate- 
gories which  condition  experience  and  enter  as  con- 
stituents into  all  experience;  so  that  to  say  that  the 
categories  are  only  valid  for  experience  means  very 
little,  experience  merely  existing  so  far  as  the  cate- 
gories enable  us  to  have  it,  and  being  valid  so  far  as 
the  categories  are  legitimately  applied,  although  not 
farther,  which  leaves  no  more  presumption  against 
religious  experience  than  against  sensible  experi- 
ence. 

They  have  denied  the  objective  validity  of  the 
categories  or  necessary  conditions  of  thought.  This 
denial  is  the  distinctive  feature  of  all  modern  agnos- 
ticism ;  and  the  theist  who  would  vindicate  the  reality 
of  his  knowledge  of  God,  the  legitimacy  of  his  belief 
in  God,  the  worth  of  his  religious  experience,  must 
refute  the  reasonings  by  which  it  has  been  supported; 
show  that  consciousness  testifies  against  it,  the  sub- 
jectivity of  any  true  category  being  unthinkable  and 
inconceivable;  and  indicate  how  its  admission  must 

645 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE    OF    GOD 

subvert  not  only  the  foundation  of  theology  but  that 
of  all  other  sciences,  and  resolve  them  all  into  castles 
in  the  air,  or  into  such  stuif  as  dreams  are  made  of. 
In  the  accomplishment  of  this  task  as  much  guidance 
and  aid  may  be  found,  perhaps,  in  the  theories  of 
cognition  of  Ferrier  and  Ilosmini  as  from  those  of 
any  of  the  Germans;  but  Hegel  and  his  followers, 
not  a  few  of  the  Herbartists,  Ulrici,  Harjns,  and  many 
other  German  thinkers,  have  contributed  to  show  the 
falsity  of  the  critical  theory  at  this  point.  Amended 
here,  it  is  a  theory  admirably  fitted  to  be  the  corner- 
stone of  a  philosophical  theism. 

More  may  be  attempted  to  be  done  in  the  region  of 
the  necessary  and  unconditioned.  The  conditions  of 
thought,  the  categories  of  experience,  the  ideas  of 
reason  are  all  linked  together,  so  that  each  has  its 
own  place  and  is  part  of  a  whole.  And  of  what 
whole?  The  idea  of  God.  All  the  metaphysical 
categories  are  included  therein,  for  God  is  the  Abso- 
lute Being;  all  the  physical  categories,  for  He  is  Ab- 
solute Force  and  Life;  all  the  mental  categories,  for 
He  is  Absolute  Spirit;  all  the  moral  categories,  for 
He  is  the  Absolutely  Good.  The  idea  of  God  is  the 
richest,  the  most  inclusive,  the  most  comprehensive 
of  all  ideas.  It  is  the  idea  of  ideas,  for  it  takes  up  all 
other  ideas  into  itself  and  gives  them  unity,  so  that 
they  constitute  a  system.  The  whole  system  issues 
into,  and  is  rendered  organic  by,  the  idea  of  God, 
which,  indeed,  contains  within  itself  all  the  ideas 
which  are  the  conditions  of  human  reason  and  the 
grounds  of  known  existence.  All  sciences,  and  even 
all  phases  and  varieties  of  human  experience,  are  only 

646 


A  SYSTEM  OF  NATURAL  THEOLOGY 

developments  of  some  of  the  ideas  included  in  this 
supreme  and  all-comprehensive  idea,  and  the  develop- 
ments have  in  no  instance  exhausted  the  ideas. 
Hence  in  the  idea  of  God  must  be  the  whole  truth  of 
the  universe  as  well  as  of  the  mind.  These  sentences 
are  an  attempt  to  express  in  the  briefest  intelligible 
form  what  it  was  the  aim  of  the  so-called  philosophy 
of  the  Absolute  to  prove  to  be  not  only  true,  but  the 
truth. 

Hegel  and  Schelling,  Krause  and  Baader,  and  their 
associates,  all  felt  themselves  to  have  the  one  mission 
in  life  of  making  manifest  that  God  was  thus  the 
truth,  the  light  of  all  knowledge,  self-revealing  in 
all  science,  the  sole  object  of  all  philosophy.  The 
Absolute  with  which  they  occupied  themselves  so 
earnestly  was  no  abstraction,  no  fiction,  such  as  Ham- 
ilton and  Mansel  supposed  it  to  be, — not  the  wholly 
indeterminate,  not  that  which  is  out  of  all  relation 
to  everything  or  to  anything,  not  the  Unknowable, — 
but  the  ground  of  all  relationship,  the  foundation 
alike  of  existence  and  of  thought,  that  which  it  is 
not  only  not  impossible  to  know,  but  which  it  is  im- 
possible not  to  know,  the  knowledge  of  its  being 
implied  in  all  knowledge.  Hegel  expressed  not  only 
his  own  conviction,  but  the  central  and  vital  thought 
of  the  whole  anti-agnostic  movement  which  culmi- 
nated in  him  when  he  wrote,  "  The  object  of  religion 
is,  like  that  of  philosophy,  the  eternal  truth  itself  in 
its  objective  existence:  it  is  God,  and  nothing  but 
God,  and  the  explanation  of  God.  Philosophy  is  not 
a  wisdom  of  the  world,  but  a  knowledge  of  the  un- 
worldly; not  a  knowledge  of  outward  matter,  of  em- 

647 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

pirical  being  and  life,  but  knowledge  of  that  which 
is  eternal,  of  that  which  is  God  and  which  flows  from 
His  nature,  as  that  must  manifest  and  develop  itself. 
Hence  philosophy  in  explaining  religion  explains  it- 
self, and  in  explaining  itself  explains  religion.  Phi- 
losophy and  religion  thus  coincide  in  that  they  have 
one  and  the  same  object."  The  adherents  of  the  phi- 
losophy of  the  Absolute  must  be  admitted  to  have 
fallen,  in  their  revulsion  from  agnosticism,  into  many 
extravagances  of  gnosticism;  but  a  theist  who  does 
not  sympathise  with  their  main  aim,  and  even  accept 
most  of  the  results  as  to  which  they  are  agreed,  can- 
not be  credited  wutli  having  much  philosophical  in- 
sight into  what  a  thorough  and  consistent  theism 
implies.  A  God  who  is  not  the  Absolute  as  they  un- 
derstood the  term,  not  the  Unconditioned  revealed  in 
all  that  is  conditioned,  and  the  essential  content  of  all 
knowledge  at  its  highest,  cannot  be  the  God  either  of 
a  profound  philosophy  or  a  fully  developed  religion. 
The  philosophy  of  the  Absolute  was,  on  the  whole, 
a  great  advance  towards  a  philosophical  theism.^ 

And  yet  it  was  largely  pantheistic,  and  tended 
strongly  towards  pantheism.  This  was  not  surprising. 
Any  philosophy  which  is  in  thorough  earnest  to  show 
that  God  is  the  ground  of  all  existence  and  the  con- 

•  On  the  doctrine  of  God  propounded  by  the  philosopliers  of  the 
Absolute  may  be  consulted  the  histories  of  philosophy  by  Chaly- 
baus,  Michelet,  Erdmann,  Ueberweg,  K.  Fischer,  Harms,  Zeller, 
&c.,  also  Piinjer,  ii.  bks.  3  and  5;  the  chapters  in  Pfloiderer  on 
Schelling,  Hegel,  Neo-Schellingianism,  and  Neo-Hegelianism ; 
Dorner's  Hist,  of  Prot.  Th  .  ii.  257,  895  ;  Lichtembergcr's  Hist, 
des  Idees  Religieuses  en  Allemnf/ne.,  &c.,  passim;  Elirenlunis's 
HegeVs  GoUeshegrijf,  &c. :  Franz  on  Scliolling's  Positive  Philosophie ; 
Opzoomer's  Leer  van  God;  K.  Pli.  Fisclier's  Charade ristije  def 
Thiosophie  Baaders  ;  Seydel's  Religious -philosophie  ;  &c, 

648 


A  SYSTEM  OF  NATURAL  THEOLOGY 

dition  of  all  knowledge  must  find  it  difiicult  to  retain 
a  firm  grasp  of  the  personality  and  transcendence  of 
the  Divine  and  to  set  them  forth  with  due  promi- 
nence. Certainly  some  of  the  most  influential  repre- 
sentatives of  the  philosophy  of  the  Absolute  ignored 
or  misrepresented  them.  The  consequence  was,  how- 
ever, that  a  band  of  thinkers  soon  appeared  who  were 
animated  with  the  most  zealous  desire  to  do  justice 
to  these  aspects  of  the  Absolute,  and  to  make  evident 
the  onesidedness  and  inadequacy  of  every  pantheistic 
conception  of  the  Divine.  This  was  the  common  aim 
of  those  who  gathered  around  the  younger  Fichte, 
and  whose  literary  organ  was  the  Zeitschrift  fur 
PhilosopJiie.  Chalybaus,  K.  Ph.  Fischer,  Sengler, 
Weisse,  Wirth,  and  LTlrici  may  be  named  as  among 
the  ablest  and  most  active.  The  Roman  Catholic 
Giinther  and  his  followers  worked  in  much  the  same 
spirit.  Lotze  has  effectively  co-operated  by  his  in- 
genious defence  of  the  thesis  that  "  perfect  personal- 
ity is  to  be  found  only  in  God,  while  in  all  finite  spirits 
there  exists  only  a  weak  imitation  of  personality;  the 
finiteness  of  the  finite  is  not  a  productive  condition  of 
personality,  but  rather  a  limiting  barrier  to  its  per- 
fect development."  This  movement  also,  then,  has 
tended  to  develop  and  contributed  to  enrich  the  the- 
ory of  theism.  Its  special  mission  has  been  to  prove 
that  theism  is  wider  than  pantheism,  and  can  include 
all  the  truth  in  pantheism,  while  pantheism  must 
necessarily  exclude  truth  in  theism  essential  to  the 
\atality  and  vigour  both  of  religion  and  of  morality.^ 

'  See  art.  "Theismus,"  byUlrici,  in  Herzog's  Real-EncyJclopddie, 
XV.  As  representing  this  phase  of  tlieism  the  following  works  may 
be  named:— C.  H.  Weisse's  Idee  der  Gottheit,  1844,  and  Phtloso- 

649 


AGNOSTICISM  AS   TO  KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

The  philosophy  of  the  Absolute,  judged  of  from  a 
distmctlv  theistic  point  of  view,  was  defective  on 
another  side.  It  regarded  too  exclusively  the  neces- 
sary and  formal  in  thought,  trusted  almost  entirely 
to  its  insight  into  the  significance  of  the  categories 
an  J  its  powers  of  rational  deduction-  Hence  the  idea 
of  the  Divine  which  it  attained,  if  vast  and  compre- 
hensive, was  also  vague  and  abstract,  shadowy  and 
unimpressive.  Correction  was  needed  on  this  side 
also,  and  it  came  through  Schleiermacher  and  that 
large  company  of  theologians,  among  whom  Lipsius, 
Franck,  and  Ritschl  have  been  the  most  prominent, 
who  have  dwelt  on  the  importance  of  proceeding 
from  immediate  personal  experience,  from  the  direct 
testimony  of  pious  feeling,  from  the  practical  needs 
of  the  moral  life,  &c  From  these  theologians  may 
be  learned  that  God  is  to  be  known,  not  through  mere 
inteUectual  cognition,  but  through  spiritual  experi- 
ence, and  that  no  dicta  as  to  the  Divine  not  verifiable 
in  experience,  not  efficacious  to  sustain  piety  and  to 
promote  virtue,  to  elevate  and  purify  the  heart,  to 
invigorate  the  will,  to  ennoble  the  character,  to  sanc- 
tify both  individuals  and  communities,  are  likely  to 
be  true.  Experience  of  the  Divine  can  be  the  richest 
and  surest  experience  only  if  it  not  merely  implies 
all  that  is  absolute  and  necessary  in  consciousness 

fkiMdu  Dogwutta^  1835;  Wirtfa's  Speemlaiwe  Idee  Gattes,  1845; 
Sadler'*  Jdee  Gottes^  1845-47;  J  H.  Ficbte's  Specmiaiive  Theol- 
ogit,  1846-47;  Hanne's  Idee  der  abtolKtem.  Pltndmlkkkeil,  1867  ; 
mricTs  GaU  m.  dx  Niatmr^  1875;  and  Lotze's  Microcostmas,  h.  ix. 
4-5  (Ei^  tr.|.  Tbe  scbool  is  well  represented  in  America  bj  Prof. 
Bawne.  See  his  Studies  in,  Theism,  e«peeiallr  eh.  7-9.  See  also 
art.  of  Prol  J.  S.  Candlirii  on  **  Tbe  Per»9nalitj  of  God,"  in 
Primeetom  Ree.,  Sept.  1884,  and  of  Gardiner  on  ^*  lAjKze's  Theistic 
rUkwophj,"  in  PreAg.  Ret).,  Oct   1885. 

650 


A  SYSTEM  OF  NATURAL  THEOLOGY 

and  existence,  but  is  also  confirmed  and  guaranteed 
by  all  that  is  relative  and  contingent  therein. 

What  are  known  as  "  the  proofs  "  for  the  Divine 
existence  have  from  the  time  of  Kant  to  the  present 
been  often  represented  as  sophistical  or  useless.  This 
view  is,  however,  less  prevalent  than  it  was.  During 
the  last  twenty  years  the  proofs  have  been  in  much 
greater  repute,  and  have  had  far  more  labour  ex- 
pended on  them,  than  during  the  previous  part  of  last 
century.  They  have,  of  course,  been  considerably 
modified,  in  conformity  with  the  general  growth  of 
thought  and  knowledge.  For  instance,  they  are  no 
longer  presented  elaborately  analysed  into  series  or 
groups  of  syllogisms.  It  is  recognised  that  the  fet- 
ters which  would  assuredly  arrest  the  progress  of 
physical  and  mental  science  cannot  be  favourable  to 
that  of  theology.  It  is  recognised  that  the  validity  of 
the  proofs  must  be  entirely  dependent  on  the  truth- 
fulness with  which  they  indicate  the  modes  in  which 
God  reveals  Himself,  the  facts  through  which  man 
apprehends  the  presence  and  attributes  of  God,  and 
that,  therefore,  the  more  simply  they  are  stated  the 
better.  !Man  knows  God  somewhat  as  he  knows  the 
minds  of  his  fellow-men — namely,  inferentially — yet 
through  an  experience  at  once  so  simple  and  so  mani- 
fold that  all  attempts  at  a  syllogistic  representation 
of  the  process  must  necessarily  do  it  injustice.  The 
closeness  and  character  of  the  connection  of  the 
proofs  have  also  come  to  be  more  clearly  seen. 
They  are  perceived  to  constitute  an  organic  whole  of 
argument,  each  of  them  establishing  its  separate  ele- 
ment, and  thus  contributing  to  the  general  result — 

65l" 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

confirmatory  evidence  that  God  is,  and  complement- 
ary evidence  as  to  what  God  is.  The  explanation  of 
this  doubtless  is  that  the  apprehension  of  God  is  itself 
an  organic  whole,  a  complex  and  harmonious  process, 
involving  all  that  is  essential  in  the  human  mind,  yet 
all  the  constituents  of  which  are  so  connected  that 
they  may  be  embraced  in  a  single  act  and  coalesce 
into  one  grand  issue. 

The  cosmological  argument  concludes  from  the 
existence  of  the  world  as  temporal  and  contingent, 
conditioned  and  phenomenal,  to  the  existence  of  God 
as  its  one  eternal,  unconditioned,  self-existent  cause. 
It  is  an  argument  wliich  has  been  in  no  respect  dis- 
credited by  recent  research  and  discussion,  which  is 
in  substance  accepted  not  only  by  theists  but  by  pan- 
theists, and  which  forms  the  basis  even  of  the  philos- 
ophy of  Herbert  Spencer.  The  principle  on  which 
it  proceeds — the  principle  of  causality — has  only 
come  to  be  more  clearly  seen  to  be  ultimate,  uni- 
versal, and  necessary.  The  hypothesis  of  an  infinite 
series  of  causes  and  effects  has  not  had  its  burden  of 
irrationality  in  the  least  diminished.  The  progress 
of  science  has  not  tended  to  show  that  the  world 
itself  may  be  reasonably  regarded  as  eternal  and  self- 
existent;  in  the  view  of  theists  it  has  only  tended  to 
render  more  probable  the  doctrine  that  all  physical 
things  must  have  their  origin  in  a  single  non-physical 
cause.  The  necessity  of  determining  aright  the  bear- 
ings of  the  new  views  reached  or  suggested  by  sci- 
ence as  to  the  ultimate  constitution  of  matter,  the 
conservation  of  energy,  cosmic  evolution,  the  age  and 
duration  of  the  present  physical  system,   &c.,   has 

652 


A  SYSTEM  OF  NATURAL  THEOLOGY 

been  the  chief  factor  in  the  latest  developments  of 
the  argument  a  contingentid  mundi.  The  teleological 
argument,  which  concludes  from  the  regularities  and 
adjustments,  pre-conformities  and  harmonies  in  nat- 
ure, that  its  first  cause  must  be  an  intelligence,  has 
been  both  corrected  and  extended  owing  to  recent 
advances  of  science  and  especially  of  biological  sci- 
ence. The  theory  of  evolution  has  not  shaken  the 
principle  or  lessened  the  force  of  the  argument,  while 
it  has  widened  its  scope  and  opened  up  vistas  of 
grander  design,  but  it  has  so  changed  its  mode  of 
presentation  that  already  the  Bridgewaier  Treatises 
and  similar  works  are  to  a  considerable  extent  anti- 
quated. Perhaps  the  most  promising  of  the  later  ap- 
plications of  the  argument  is  that  which  rests  on  the 
results  obtained  by  a  philosophical  study  of  history, 
and  which  seeks  to  show  that  the  goal  of  the  evolu- 
tion of  life,  so  far  as  it  has  yet  proceeded,  is  the  per- 
fecting of  human  nature,  and  the  eternal  source  of 
things  a  power  which  makes  for  truth  and  righteous- 
ness. The  ethical  argument — the  proof  from  con- 
science and  the  moral  order — held  a  very  subordi- 
nate place  in  the  estimation  of  writers  on  natural 
theology  until  Kant  rested  on  it  almost  the  whole 
weight  of  theism.  It  has  ever  since  been  prominent, 
and  has  been  the  argument  most  relied  on  to  produce 
practical  conviction.  Much  importance  is  now  rarely 
attached  to  those  forms  of  the  metaphysical  argu- 
ment which  are  deductions  from  a  particular  concep- 
tion, as,  e.g.,  of  a  perfect  being.  Ignorance  alone, 
however,  can  account  for  the  assertion  often  met 
with  that  the  argument  is  generally  abandoned.     It 

653 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

has  only  been  transformed.  It  has  passed  from  a 
stage  in  which  it  was  presented  in  particular  ontolog- 
ical  forms  into  one  in  which  it  is  set  forth  in  a  general 
epistemological  form.  As  at  present  maintained,  it 
is  to  the  effect  that  God  is  the  idea  of  ideas,  the  ulti- 
mate in  human  thought,  without  whom  all  thought  is 
confusion  and  self-contradiction.  In  this  form,  by 
what  theologians  and  religious  philosophers  possessed 
of  much  speculative  insight  is  it  not  held?  ^ 

The  changes  adopted  in  the  methods  of  theistic 
proof  have  all  tended  in  one  direction — namely,  to 
remove  or  correct  extreme  and  exaggerated  concep- 
tions of  the  Divine  transcendence  and  to  produce  a 
true  appreciation  of  the  Divine  immanence, — to  set 
aside  deism  and  to  enrich  theism  with  what  is  good  in 
pantheism.  The  general  movement  of  religious  spec- 
ulation within  the  theistic  area  has  been  towards 
mediation  between  the  extremes  of  pantheism  and  of 
deism,  towards  harmonious  combination  of  the  per- 
sonal self -equality  and  the  universal  agency  of  the 
Divine.  Positive  science  has  powerfully  co-operated 
with  speculation  in  giving  support  and  impulse  to 
this  movement.  AVhile  the  modern  scientific  view 
of  the  world  does  not  result  in  pantheism,  it  affords 
it  a  partial  and  relative  justification,  and  requires  a 
theism  which,  while  maintaining  the  personality  of 
God,  recognises  God  to  be  in  all  things,  and  all 
things  to  be  of  God,  through  God,  and  to  God.  It 
may  be  said  that  theism  has  always  thus  recognised 
the  Divine  immanence.     The  vague  recognition  of 

'  Seethe  present  writer's  Theism,  and  the  indications  of  the  litera- 
ture given  in  the  notes.  [Dr.  Hutchison  Stirling's  Gifford  Lectures 
are  of  special  value  in  connection  with  the  theistic  proofs.] 

654 


A  SYSTEM  OF  NATURAL  THEOLOGY 

it,  however,  which  precedes  scientific  insight  and  the 
conquest  and  absorption  of  pantheism,  is  not  to  be 
identified  with  the  realising  comprehension  of  it 
which  is  their  result/ 

As  to  the  further  treatment  of  the  idea  of  God  in 
recent  or  contemporary  theology,  the  following  may 
be  mentioned  as,  perhaps,  the  chief  distinctive  feat- 
ures: first,  the  general  endeavour  to  present  the  idea 
as  a  harmonious  reflex  of  the  Divine  nature  and  life, 
instead  of  as  a  mere  aggregate  of  attributes ;  secondly, 
and  consequently,  the  greater  care  shown  in  the  clas- 
sification and  correlation  of  the  attributes,  so  as  to 
refer  them  to  their  appropriate  places  in  the  one  great 
organic  thought;  and  thirdly,  the  more  truly  ethical 
and  spiritual  representation  given  of  the  Divine  char- 
acter. To  realise  the  nature  and  import  of  the  first 
of  these  features  it  is  only  necessary  to  compare  the 
expositions  given  of  the  idea  of  God  in  the  works  of 
such  theologians  as  Nitzsch,  Thomasius,  Dorner, 
Philippi,  Kahnis,  and  even  more  in  those  of  the  repre- 
sentatives of  German  speculative  theism,  with  such 
as  are  to  be  found  in  the  treatises  of  Hill,  Watson, 
Wardlaw,  and  Hodge,  which,  although  published  in 
the  last  century,  express  only  the  views  of  an  earlier 
age.  As  to  the  second  point,  there  has  of  late  been 
a  vast  amount  of  thought  expended  in  endeavouring 
so  to  classify  and  co-ordinate  the  attributes,  and  so 
to  refer  them  to  the  various  moments  of  the  Divine 

'  See  the  extremely  interesting  papers  by  Peabody,  Montgomery, 
Howison,  and  Harris  in  the  Journal  of  Speculative  Philosophy  tor 
Oct  1885,  on  the  question.  "  Is  Pantheism  the  Legitimate  Out- 
come of  Modern  Scienee  ?  "  Also  F.  K.  Abbot's  Scientific  Theism^ 
1885,  and  J.  Fiske's  Idea  of  God  as  affected  by  Modern  Knowledge, 
1885. 

655 


AGNOSTICISM   AS   TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF   GOD 

existence  and  life,  as  that  God  may  be  able  to  be 
apprehended  both  in  His  unity  and  completeness,  self- 
identity  and  spiritual  richness,  as  one  whole  harmoni- 
ous and  perfect  personality.  Of  the  work  attempted 
in  this  direction  our  limits  will  not  allow  us  to  treat. 
In  regard  to  the  third  feature,  any  one  who  will 
peruse  an  essay  like  Weber's  Vom  Zorne  Gottes,  or 
Ritschl's  De  Ira  Dei,  and  compares  the  way  in  which 
the  Biblical  conception  of  the  wrath  of  God  is  there 
presented  with  the  mode  of  exhibiting  it  prevalent 
for  so  many  ages,  is  likely  to  be  convinced  that  con- 
siderable progress  has  been  made  even  in  recent 
times  in  the  study  of  the  moral  aspects  of  God's  char- 
acter. That  the  Divine  glory  must  centre  in  moral 
perfection,  in  holy  love,  is  a  thought  which  is  un- 
doubtedly being  realised  by  all  theists  with  ever-in- 
creasing clearness  and  fulness.^ 

It  follows  from  the  above  that  theistic  thought  has 
been  moving  in  a  direction  which  could  not  fail  to 
suggest  to  those  influenced  by  it  that  a  rigidly  uni- 
tarian conception  of  God  must  be  inadequate,  and 
that  the  trinitarian  conception  might  be  the  only  one 
in  which  reason  can  rest  as  self-consistent.  So  long 
as  the  simplicity  of  the  Divine  nature  was  conceived 
of  as  an  abstract  self-identity,  intelligence  could  not 
venture  to  attempt  to  pass  from  the  unity  to  the  trin- 
ity of  the  Godhead,  or  hope  for  any  glimpse  of  the 
possibility  of  harmoniously  combining  them.      But 

'  Bruch,  Lehre  von  den  Gottl.  Etgenschaften,  1842 ;  Moll,  De 
Justo  Attributorum  Dei  Discrimine,  1855  [Both  are,  however, 
now  inadequate.  Among  the  most  interesting  and  suggestive  classi- 
fications of  the  Divine  Attributes  are  those  of  Schleiermacher, 
Nitzsch,  Twesten,  Kahnis,  Philippi,  Schweizer,  Dorner,  Brecken- 
ridge,  and  Cocker.  ] 

656 


A  SYSTEM  OF  NATURAL  THEOLOGY 

this  view  of  the  simplicity  of  the  Divine  nature  hav- 
ing been  abandoned,  and  an  idea  of  God  attained 
which  assigns  to  Him  all  the  distinctions  compatible 
with,  and  demanded  by,  completeness  and  perfection 
of  personality,  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  necessarily 
entered  on  a  new  stage  of  its  history.  The  free  move- 
ment of  thought  in  the  last  century,  far  from  exjielling 
it  from  its  place  in  the  mind  of  Christendom,  has 
caused  it  to  strike  deeper  root  and  grow  with  fresh 
vigour.  Xever  since  the  Nicene  age  has  theological 
speculation  been  so  actively  occupied  with  the  con- 
stitution of  the  Godhead,  and  with  the  trinitarian 
representation  thereof,  as  from  the  commencement 
of  the  past  century.  It  is,  of  course,  impossible  here 
to  describe  any  of  the  attempts  which,  during  this 
period,  have  been  made  to  show  that  the  absolute 
Divine  self-consciousness  implies  a  trinitarian  form 
of  existence,  and  that  intelligently  to  think  of  the 
essential  Trinity  is  to  think  of  those  moments  in  the 
Divine  existence  without  which  personality  and  self- 
consciousness  are  unthinkable ;  or  that  a  worthy  con- 
ception of  Divine  love  demands  a  trinitarian  mode  of 
life;  or  that  a  world  distinct  from  God  presupposes 
that  God  as  triune  is  in  and  for  Himself  a  perfect 
and  infinite  world,  so  that  His  attributes  and  activi- 
ties already  fully  realised  in  the  trinitarian  life  can 
proceed  outwards,  not  of  necessity  but  of  absolute 
freedom;  or  that  the  whole  universe  is  a  manifesta- 
tion of  His  triune  nature,  and  all  finite  spiritual  life 
a  reflection  of  the  archetypal  life,  self-sustained  and 
self-fulfilled  therein.  All  the  more  thoughtful  trini- 
tarian divines  of  the  present  endeavour  to  make  it 

657 


AGNOSTICISM    AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE    OF    GOD 

apparent  that  the  doctrine  of  the  Trinity  is  not  one 
which  has  been  merely  imposed  upon  faith  by  ex- 
ternal authority,  but  one  which  satisfies  reason,  gives 
expression  to  the  self-evidencing  substance  of  revela- 
tion, and  explains  and  supports  religious  experience. 
If  it  be  thought  that  their  success  has  not  been  great, 
it  has  to  be  remembered  that  they  have  been  labour- 
ing near  the  commencement  of  a  movement,  and  so 
at  a  stage  when  all  individual  efforts  can  have  only 
a  very  limited  worth.  To  one  general  conclusion 
they  all  seem  to  have  come — namely,  that  the  idea 
of  God  as  substance  is  not  the  only  idea  with  which 
we  can  connect,  or  in  which  we  may  find  implied, 
tri-personality.  The  category  of  substance  is,  in 
some  respects,  one  very  inapplicable  to  God,  as  the 
philosophy  of  Spinoza  has  indirectly  shown.  If  the 
theologians  referred  to  be  correct,  the  doctrine  of 
the  Trinity  is  not  specially  dependent  upon  it.  In 
their  view  God  cannot  be  thought  of  consistently  as, 
e.g.,  Absolute  Life,  Absolute  Intelligence,  or  Abso- 
lute Love,  unless  He  be  thought  of  in  a  trinitarian 
manner. 

While  trinitarian  theism  has  thus  during  the  past 
century  shown  abundant  vitality  and  vigour,  it  can- 
not be  said  to  have  gained  any  decided  victory  over 
unitarian  theism.  The  latter  has  also  within  the 
same  period  spread  more  widely  and  shown  more 
practical  activity,  more  s])iritual  life,  than  in  any 
former  age.  The  unitarianism  represented  by  a 
Martineau  Avas  a  manifest  advance  on  that  which  had 
been  represented  even  by  a  Priestley.  Theism  in  its 
unitarian  form  is  the  creed  of  very  many  of  the  most 

658 


A  SYSTEM  OF  NATURAL  THEOLOGY 

cultured  and  most  religious  minds  of  our  time,  alike 
in  Europe  and  America.  In  this  form  it  has  also 
signally  shown  its  power  in  contemporary  India. 
Brahmoism  is,  perhaps,  the  most  remarkable  exam- 
ple of  a  unitarian  theism  which  exhibits  all  the  char- 
acteristics of  a  positive  faith  and  a  churchly  organi- 
sation. The  unitarian  theism  of  the  present  age  is 
distinguished  by  the  great  variety  of  its  kinds  or 
types.  None  of  these,  it  must  be  added,  are  very 
definite  or  stable.  Hence  unitarian  theism  is  often 
seen  to  approximate  to,  or  become  absorbed  into,  ag- 
nosticism or  pantheism,  cosmism  or  humanitarianism. 
This  may  be  due,  however,  less  to  its  own  character 
than  to  the  character  of  the  age.* 

The  mind  of  man  has  clearly  not  yet  ceased  to  be 
intensely  interested*  in  thoughts  of  God.  There  are 
no  grounds  apparent  for  supposing  that  it  will  ever 
cease  to  seek  after  Him  or  to  strive  to  enlarge  its 
knowledge  of  His  ways.  And,  if  the  idea  of  God  be 
what  has  been  suggested  in  the  foregoing  pages,  the 
search  for  God  cannot  fail  to  meet  with  an  ever- 
growing resjwnse.  K  the  idea  of  God  be  the  most 
comprehensive  of  ideas,  inclusive  of  all  the  categories 
of  thought  and  implicative  of  their  harmonious  syn- 
thesis and  perfect  realisation,  all  thought  and  experi- 
ence must  of  its  very  nature  tend  to  lead  onwards 
to  a  fuller  knowledge  of  God.  For  the  knowledge  of 
God,  on  this  view,  consists  in  no  mere  inference 
reached  through  a  process  of  theological  argumenta- 

'  Goblet  d'Alviclla,  Contemporary  Evolution  of  Reltgiovs 
Thought  in  England,  America,  ami  India,  1885. 

The  unitarian  theism  of  to  clay  \s  admirably  represented  in 
Upton's  Hihbert  Lectures,  1894,  and  Armstrong's  God  and  the  Soul, 
1896. 

G59 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE   OF    GOD 

tion,  but  in  an  ever-growing  apprehension  of  an  ever- 
advancing  self-revelation  of  God;  and  all  philosophy, 
science,  experience,  and  history  must  necessarily 
work  together  to  promote  it. 

All  speculative  thought,  whether  professedly  meta- 
physical or  professedly  theological,  is  conversant  with 
ideas  included  in  the  idea  of  God.  It  deals  with 
what  is  necessary  in  and  to  thought;  and  within  that 
sphere,  notwithstanding  many  aberrations,  it  has 
made  slow  but  sure  progress.  The  history  of  philo- 
sophical speculation  is  not  only,  like  the  whole  his- 
tory of  man,  essentially  rational,  but  it  is,  in  sub- 
stance, the  history  of  reason  itself  in  its  purest  form, 
— not  the  record  of  an  accidental  succession  of  opin- 
ions, but  of  the  progressive  apprehension  by  reason 
of  God's  revelation  of  Himself  in  its  own  constitu- 
tion. ''  There  is  much  in  the  history  of  speculative 
thought,  just  as  in  the  outward  life  of  man,  that  be- 
longs to  the  accidental  and  irrational — errors,  vaga- 
ries, paradoxes,  whimsicalities,  assuming  in  all  ages 
the  name  and  the  guise  of  philosophy.  But,  just  as 
the  student  of  the  constitutional  history  of  England 
can  trace,  amidst  all  the  complexity  and  contingency 
of  outward  and  passing  events,  through  successive 
times  and  dynasties,  underneath  the  waywardness  of 
individual  passion  and  the  struggle  for  ascendency  of 
classes  and  orders,  the  silent,  steady  development  of 
that  system  of  ordered  freedom  which  we  name  the 
constitution  of  England,  so,  looking  back  on  the 
course  which  human  thought  has  travelled,  we  shall 
be  at  no  loss  to  discern  beneath  the  surface  change 
of  opinions,  unaffected  by  the  abnormal  displays  of 

660 


A  SYSTEM  OF  NATURAL  THEOLOGY 

individual  folly  and  unreason,  the  traces  of  a  con- 
tinuous onward  movement  of  mind."  *  And  this 
continuous  onward  movement  is  towards  the  clearer 
and  wider  apprehension  of  the  whole  system  of  ulti- 
mate truths  which  is  comprehended  in  the  idea  of 
the  Absolute  Truth.  The  thoughts  of  men  as  to  God 
are  necessarily  enlarged  by  increase  of  insight  into 
the  conditions  of  their  own  thinking.  The  disquisi- 
tions of  merely  professional  theologians  on  the  nat- 
ure and  attributes  of  God  have  done  far  less  to  eluci- 
date the  idea  of  God  than  the  philosophical  views  of 
great  speculative  thinkers,  and  would  have  done  less 
than  they  have  actually  accomplished  were  it  not  for 
the  guidance  and  suggestion  found  in  these  views. 

The  sciences  co-operate  with  speculative  philoso- 
phy and  with  one  another  in  aiding  thought  to  grow 
in  the  knowledge  of  God.  The  greatness,  the  power, 
the  wisdom,  the  goodness  of  the  God  of  creation  and 
providence  must  be  increasingly  apprehended  in  the 
measure  that  nature  and  its  course,  humanity  and  its 
history,  are  apprehended;  and  that  measure  is  given 
us  in  the  stage  of  development  attained  by  the  sci- 
ences. "  God's  glory  in  the  heavens,"  for  example, 
is  in  some  degree  visible  to  the  naked  eye  and  unin- 
structed  intellect,  but  it  becomes  more  perceptible 
and  more  impressive  with  every  discovery  of  astron- 
omy, ^ot  otherwise  is  it  as  regards  all  the  sciences. 
Each  of  them  has  its  distinctive  and  appropriate  con- 
tribution to  bring  towards  the  completion  of  the  reve- 
lation of  God,  and  cannot  withhold  it. 

•  Principal  Caird,  Progressiveness  of  the  Sciences,  pp.  27,  28, 
Glasgow,  1875. 

.661 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO   KNOWLEDGE    OF    GOD 

But  the  idea  of  (iod  is  not  one  which  can  be  rightly 
apprehended  merely  through  intellect  speculatively 
exercised  or  operating  on  the  findings  of  science.  It 
requires  to  be  also  apprehended  through  moral  ex- 
perience and  the  discipline  of  life.  Neither  individ- 
uals nor  communities  can  know  more  of  God  as  a 
moral  being  than  their  moral  condition  and  charac- 
ter permit  them  to  know.  The  apprehension  of  God 
and  the  sense  of  moral  distinctions  and  moral  obliga- 
tions condition  each  other  and  correspond  to  each 
other.  History  shows  us  that  sincere  and  pious  men 
may  receive  as  a  supematurally  revealed  truth  the 
declaration  that  God  is  love,  and  yet  hold  that  His 
love  is  very  limited,  being  real  only  to  a  favoured 
class,  and  that  He  has  foreordained,  for  His  mere 
good  pleasure,  millions  of  the  human  race  to  eternal 
misery.  How  was  such  inconsistency  possible? 
Largely  because  these  men,  notwithstanding  their 
sincerity  and  piety,  were  lacking  in  that  love  to  man 
through  experience  of  which  alone  God's  love  can  be 
truly  apprehended.  In  like  manner,  it  is  not  only 
the  science  of  law  which  cannot  advance  more  rap- 
idly than  the  sense  of  justice,  but  also  theology  so  far 
as  it  treats  of  the  righteousness  of  God.  Thus  the 
knowledge  of  God  is  conditioned  and  influenced  by 
the  course  of  man's  moral  experience. 

The  same  may  be  said  of  the  distinctively  religious 
experience.  In  it  also  there  has  been  a  continuous 
discovery  and  a  continuous  disclosure  of  God.  It  is 
not  long  since  the  ethnic  religions  were  very  gener- 
ally regarded  as  merely  stages  of  human  folly,  so 
many  monuments  of  aversion  to  God  and  of  depart- 

6G3 


A  SYSTEM   OF  NATITRAL  THEOLOGY 

lire  from  the  truth  as  to  God.  It  was  supposed  that 
thej  were  adequately  desq/'ibed  when  they  were 
called  "  idolatries  "  and  "  superstitions."  This  view 
rested  on  a  strangely  unworthy  conception  both  of 
human  nature  and  of  Divine  providence,  and  is  fast 
passing  away.  In  its  place  has  come  the  conviction 
that  the  history  of  religion  has  been  essentially  a 
process  of  search  for  God  on  the  part  of  man,  and  a 
process  of  self-revelation  on  the  part  of  God  to  man, 
resulting  in  a  continuous  widening  and  deepening  of 
human  apprehension  of  the  Divine.  All,  indeed,  has 
not  been  progress  in  the  history  of  religion  either  in 
the  ethnic  or  Christian  period;  much  has  been  the 
reverse ;  but  all  stages  of  religion  testify  that  man  has 
been  seeking  and  finding  God,  and  God  making  Him- 
self known  unto  man. 

But,  while  knowledge  of  God  may  reasonably  be 
expected  unceasingly  to  grow,  in  all  the  ways  which 
have  l^een  indicated,  from  more  to  more,  it  is  not  to 
be  supposed  that  doubt  or  denial  of  God's  existence 
must  therefore  speedily  disappear.  Religious  agnos- 
ticism cannot  fail  to  remain  long  prevalent.  The  very 
wealth  of  contents  in  the  idea  of  God  inevitably  ex- 
poses the  idea  to  the  assaults  of  agnosticism.  All 
kinds  of  agnosticism  merge  into  agnosticism  as  to 
God,  from  the  very  fact  that  all  knowledge  implies 
and  may  contribute  to  the  knowledge  of  God.  The 
more  comprehensive  an  idea  is,  from  the  more  points 
can  it  be  assailed;  and  the  idea  of  God,  being  compre- 
hensive of  all  ultimate  ideas,  may  be  assailed  through 
them  all — as,  for  example,  through  the  idea  of  be- 
ing, or  of  infinity,  or  of  causality,  or  of  personality, 

663 


AGNOSTICISM   AS    TO    KNOWLEDGE    OE    GOD 

or  of  rectitude.  Then,  in  another  way,  the  unicjue 
fulness  of  the  idea  of  (xod  exphiins  the  prevalence 
of  agnosticism  in  regard  to  it.  The  ideas  are  not 
precisely  in  God  what  they  are  in  man  or  nature. 
God  is  being  as  man  or  nature  is  not;  for  He  is  inde- 
pendent and  necessary  being,  and  in  that  sense  the 
one  true  Being.  God  is  not  limited  by  time  and 
space  as  creatures  are;  for,  whereas  duration  and 
extension  merely  are  predicates  of  creatures,  the  cor- 
responding attributes  of  God  are  eternity  and  im- 
mensity. God  as  first  cause  is  a  cause  in  a  higher 
and  more  real  sense  than  any  second  cause.  So  as 
to  personality,  intelligence,  holiness,  love.  Just  be- 
cause the  idea  of  God  is  thus  elevated  in  all  respects, 
there  are'  many  minds  which  fail  or  refuse  to  rise  up 
to  it,  and  which  because  of  its  very  truth  reject  it 
as  not  true  at  all.  They  will  not  hear  of  that  Abso- 
lute Truth  which  is  simply  the  idea  of  God;  but  that 
they  reject  it  is  their  misfortune,  not  any  argument 
against  the  truth  itself. 

It  will  be  seen  from  the  foregoing  extract  that 
much  which  I  have  desired  to  do  in  connection  with 
Natural  Theology  has  as  yet  hardly  been  even  at- 
tempted by  me.  That  I  shall  accomplish  all  that  I 
began  by  aiming  at  is  very  unlikely,  but  that  causes 
me  little  regret,  as  I  feel  sure  that  many  others  will 
follow  on  the  same  lines,  and  advance  much  farther 
than  I  have  been  able  to  do. 


664 


UCSB  LIBRAKY 


X    000  658  131     8 


